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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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https://archive.org/details/otherpeoplesdaugO0wemb 


OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 





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(iS) Author of ‘The Right to Believe’ and ‘The Significance of Art’ & 

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Boston and New York 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
The Riverside Press Cambridge 


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COPYRIGHT, 1923, 1924, AND 1925, BY THE SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC. 
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC. 
COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE 


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 


The Riverside Press 
CAMBRIDGE - MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. 


TO 
ELIZABETH McLELLAN ROWLAND 
WHOSE DAUGHTER 


IT IS MY GREAT PRIVILEGE TO BE 


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PREFACE 


THE following sketches of girls, their sweethearts 
and their families, all of whom have found living 
in a complex world a somewhat difficult matter, 
are not offered merely as records of fact, nor as 
bits of life disguised as fiction, although they are 
both of these. They are preéminently an experi- 
mental attempt on the part of one interested, not 
only in the human drama, but in the science of 
psychology, to study, by a kind of transplanted 
laboratory method, emotional phenomena which 
by the nature of the case can never be caught, 
held, and analyzed in the cool atmosphere of the 
laboratory. To the chemist and the physicist 
with their proud boast of measurable elements, 
the science of psychology must ever appear, and in 
reality is, inexact. The psychologist, interested 
in events outside the laboratory as well as in, 
is rather in the position of that other scientist 
of later days, the geographer. Neither one can 
capture or buy at wholesale his continents or his 
tides, his loves or his hates, and measure them 
under a quiet microscope. Each must rather, with 


Vili PREFACE 


whatever pains, travel to his torrents, whether of 
water or of wrath, and his frozen mountains, 
whether of ice or of baffled instinct, and must 
study them where they are. But however toil- 
some the method, and incapable as are both ex- 
plorers of telling what they find in the precise 
terms of the exact sciences, neither one would 
sacrifice the richness of his field, the wild tangles 
of the outer or the inner world, for the greater 
finesse of the physicist’s scales, or the test-tubes 
of the chemist, which froth and change color at 
his convenience over his quiet table. 

The purpose of these stories is, therefore, in 
ever so inadequate a way, to bring the complex 
inner life of a few inarticulate people before the 
student of human behavior, not merely as the 
fiction writer who very rightly has no object other 
than his art, nor wholly as a dispassionate re- 
corder of events whose report is studiously purged 
of the emotion of which he writes. Both may be 
more valuable things to do, but they have been 
done many times, and I have not tried them here. 
These sketches are rather the experimental at- 
tempts of a would-be human geographer to dis- 
play and to impress upon his audience by moving- 
pictures, rather than by statistics, the deserts, the 
warped vegetation, and the volcanoes which he 


PREFACE 1X 


has witnessed. The psychological insets corre- 
spond to the geographer’s altitudes, his sound- 
ings, and his barometric charts. But in the main 
he leaves his pictures wholly as fact, and partly 
if possible of beauty, to tell their own story. And 
so do I. 

ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE 


CLEVELAND, OHIO 
January 15, 1926 


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XIII. 
SIV. 
. THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING (Morgs) 
XVI. 
XVII. 


CONTENTS 


. THE BOOKKEEPER (BEHAVIOR PATTERNS) 
. THE ALIAS (DAYDREAMS) 
. THE New House (WISHES) 


. BULLIEVE ME! (EXPRESSION IN WoRDS 


AND PLAY) 


. ESTELLE AND SAM (ADAPTATION) 
. GERTRUDE AND GUS (EXHIBITIONISM) 
. IRENE AND NICHOLAS (COMPENSATION) 


. L.Q. .73 (STANDARD MENTAL EXAMINA- 


TIONS) 


. Dutt (Morons) 
. THE Two MarGARETSs (IMITATION) 


. PETTING AND THE Campus (INSTINCTS — 


SEX) 


. GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER (INSTINCTS — PA- 


RENTAL LOVE) 
SILK STOCKINGS (INSTINCTS — EGoTISM) 
THE First oF May (INstTINcts — HERD) 


SEVEN P.M. (FATIGUE) 
Just LIKE STEVE (EDUCATION) 


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227 
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OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
I 
THE BOOKKEEPER 


THE BOOKKEEPER 


‘Behavior pattern’ is a term often applied by 
psychologists to the system of habits and ways of 
thinking which make up the life of any individual 
or group. These habits become so interrelated 
with each other that when some of them are neces- 
sarily changed because of a complete change of 
environment, the rest of them tend to be shaken 
up in sympathy. The individual at such a time is 
often temporarily off his guard, and ways of act- 
ing which would be impossible to fit into the old 
behavior pattern, in the old environment, be- 
come possible in the new. 

All young people are in particular need of su- 
pervision, whenever their life habits shift from 
old grooves into new. 


OTHER PEOPLE’S 
DAUGHTERS 


I 
THE BOOKKEEPER 


NorMA came from East Eden where she graduated 
from high school in a white organdie dress, and 
sang a duet with the minister’s son at the class 
reception. She had been a careful, conscientious 
student, and for two years since her graduation 
she had been a clerk and bookkeeper in her uncle’s 
hardware store. But Norma was not satisfied. 
She was an ambitious girl, and dreamed long 
dreams, chief of which was the dream of going to 
the city to make her way in some larger business 
enterprise than the selling of shears to country 
housewives, and hoes and lawn-mowers to their 
husbands. 

So Norma came to the city, and, as if by Fate’s 
appointment, she found herself, at her daily 
lunch-counter, seated next to Luman, a six-foot 
mining man from Denver. Luman was handsome 
and talkative. He easily scraped acquaintance 
with the pleasant-looking girl whom he saw every 


4 OTHER PEOPEE'S DAUGHTERS & 


noon, and Norma listened to his stories with fas- 
cination. 

Although a small-town girl reared to house- 
wifely interests, she was, by nature, a statistician. 
She loved figures and the adding and subtracting 
of them. The larger the better. She had been 
the only girl in high school who was not afraid of 
partial payments and percentage, and she at- 
tacked a page of figures, and even the stock 
quotations in the morning paper, like a dish of 
sweet morsels. So to have a handsome stranger 
talk finance to her all through the lunch hour, and 
to have these figures stand for gold mines instead 
of kegs of nails, was her idea of glory and romance. 
The whole affair entertained Luman enormously. 
He had been accustomed to women more than 
ready to share the contents of his gold mines. 
But this absorbed little bookkeeper, with her 
thirst for figures, regardless of whose bankbook 
they adorned, was a new type. He would put up 
various financial schemes to her, and roar with 
laughter when she put her finger on their weak- 
nesses. ‘You sure would make a good pardner for 
a mining man,’ he chuckled. ‘I’d like to see your 
face if some of the boys tried to sell you a wildcat 
proposition.’ 

All of this put Norma into a glow of happiness. 


THE BPOOKKEEPER 5 


Within a week she had decided that she had 
always meant to marry a Westerner, and that 
probably six bridesmaids would be more effective 
than four. Luman had a car, and he got into the 
way of picking up Norma after office hours and 
taking her off for dinner and a drive through the 
parksand along the river-front. He even persuaded 
her to go to the public amusement grounds with 
him, although this was a radical proceeding for 
Norma, and she clung to him with a fearful joy on 
her first ‘witching waves’ and ‘shoot the chutes.’ 
By July Luman asked Norma to marry him, and 
she had agreed with the greatest enthusiasm. She 
was more than ready to marry him; in fact, it had 
not crossed her mind that she would do anything 
else. She wanted to marry him at once in the East 
Eden Church, but, since he did not seem to relish 
that idea, she would have married him any day, 
any time, anywhere. That was how she felt about 
it. She expected to drive up to a minister’s with- 
out delay, and for the life of her she could not see 
what they were waiting for. Being naturally 
systematic, as well as much in love, she fretted a 
good deal over the delay. But Luman hesitated, 
and finally announced that he must go to Denver. 
Business was not what it should be. He would go 
first, and then would send for her. When she 


6 OTHER PEOPLES JDAG GH bio 


heard of this, she hinted and then begged outright 
to go with him, but he said that it was impossible. 
Then with no more ado, he simply left, with no 
forwarding address. 

For a few weeks Norma went to her office as 
before. But it was a long hot walk, she was not 
well, and so thoroughly distressed and miserable, 
that she was almost frantic. All of this had not 
escaped the sharp eyes of Mrs. Neilson, the small 
blonde wife of a local coal-dealer, who had been 
rooming temporarily at the same house with 
Norma. Mrs. Neilson was a young woman who 
said little, but who saw a good deal. Her stay at 
the rooming-house had been chiefly devoted to 
watching Norma and Luman in their love-making. 
She had been fairly certain that all was not well 
even before he left. Now there could be no mis- 
taking that there was trouble. Her room was 
adjacent to Norma’s and she heard her crying 
every night much too long and much too desper- 
ately to be merely lonesome for her lover. 

One evening she listened to her as long as she 
could bear it, and then she tapped on Norma’s 
door. Getting no answer, she walked in, and sat 
down on the bed beside the sobbing girl. ‘You 
can do these things if you are small enough,’ she 
explained to her husband. ‘If you are big, they 


THE BOOKKEEPER 7 


throw you out. I’m too small to kick.’ So she sat 
on the bed and put her hand on Norma’s shoulder. 
‘Say, kid,’ she remarked, ‘I know what’s wrong. 
That guy has gone off and left you in trouble. 
Hard luck, but there’s no use in crying so loud 
you wake the whole house. Cheer up. You’re not 
the first one. [ll get you a job with my man, and 
see you through’ — and with no more ado (she 
being twenty and Norma eighteen) she lay down 
beside her, and they went to sleep. 

Tim, the coal-dealer, was an indulgent husband, 
his wife being a very recent acquisition, and he 
agreed to take Norma into his office to settle his 
books. ‘The Lord knows they need it,’ he said 
with a large laugh. So Norma was established and 
boarded with them next door. Mrs. Tim, whose 
talents lay in quite other lines from those of bal- 
ancing figures, had a silent but inordinate respect 
for Norma’s powers. She often dropped in at the 
office and watched Norma vibrating between her 
ledgers and the safe, and knitting her brows over 
the cash-box. ‘Gosh, kid!’ would be her brief 
comment, and with a pat on the shoulder, she 
would walk out again. Norma was not wholly 
easy to deal with at this period. If any one recalls 
how the young soldier patients used to look in the 
hospital amputation wards, as they puffed their 


8 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


cigarettes and stared straight in front of them, 
they will know how Norma looked. Every young 
veteran with his crutch beside him was thinking, 
‘I, the best dancer in town, am going to be a crip- 
ple, a legless man whom the girls will pity for ever 
and ever.’ In the same way, as soon as Norma’s 
books balanced, the light in her eyes died out, and 
she sat in Mrs. Neilson’s parlor with the same 
stare. Her thoughts ran like a windmill, ‘I, a 
member of the church, am a bad girl. It’s hap- 
pened to me. I, with a fatherless baby like the 
poorhouse women.’ The name for this state of 
mind and for the expression which it stamps upon 
the face is—Shock. And shock does not make a 
a person easy to deal with. Sometimes Mrs. 
Neilson would cry — ‘Cut it, kid, you give me the 
jumps,’ and would drag her to the movie. But 
the plots were often so distressingly similar to 
Norma’s own drama, that her friend was obliged 
to add, ‘Let’s beat it, kid,’ and drag her home 
again. 

And when the baby was finally born and died 
within a few days, Norma was still harder to deal 
with. For she was sorry the baby died, but not 
sorry enough, and sorry because she was not as 
sorry as she ought to be, and altogether was so 
torn between the feelings which she did and did 


THE BOOKKEEPER 9 


not have, that Mrs. Neilson, whose theology 
was of a most sketchy order, had occasion more 
than once to murmur, ‘Gosh, you church mem- 
bers!’ 

In the meantime Mrs. Neilson had got Norma’s 
old position back for her, since it paid much better 
wages than Tim could afford. And with a cheerful 
disregard of truth she had told such a circum- 
stantial account of Norma’s appendicitis, that 
the other girls in the office suspected nothing. 
Norma was apparently just where she was before, 
except that, as all the stenographers agreed, 
‘An appendix does pull down your looks.’ 

Norma grimly declined to discuss her symp- 
toms with the other appendix victims, but Mrs. 
Neilson, so seldom talkative, could do a good job 
when she set about it, and no lies were necessary 
on Norma’s part. ‘No one could fool me with a 
tale like that,’ mused Mrs. Neilson, ‘but I’ve 
bluffed that darn office to a fare-ye-well.’ 

Perhaps the most striking feature of the whole 
situation was the unlimited confidence which 
Norma and Mrs. Neilson placed in one another, 
although each of them belonged to a type of which 
the other fundamentally disapproved. Norma 
had never supposed such heathen as Mrs. Neilson 
existed outside of darkest Africa. In vain could 


10 OTHER’) PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 


she extract from her any inkling as to her religious 
convictions, or even as to her preferences. Mrs. 
Tim asserted that she had never been in a church 
except when her uncle got married. ‘But he was 
married in a swell church all right,’ she boasted. 
‘But what kind,’ pleaded Norma, ‘Catholic or 
Protestant?’ ‘Brick,’ said Mrs. Neilson; and 
further than that, she either could not, or would 
not go. On the other hand Mrs. Neilson would 
say pleasantly to Norma, ‘You know, you prunes 
from Hickville, I never could see you before; you 
just weren’t on my map.’ Yet, despite the fact 
that her cynical distrust of most women amounted 
almost to a mania, she never doubted one least 
detail of Norma’s story. When Tim, in his large 
masculine way, observed that maybe Norma 
hadn’t been quite as innocent as she made herself 
out, he got such a piece of his wife’s mind that he 
stared at her in surprise. ‘Well, well. Maybe she 
was, maybe she was,’ he recanted hastily, re- 
flecting that it was useless to try to fathom his 
wife’s likes and dislikes. 

As it turned out, the implicit confidence which 
the two girls had in each other made them excel- 
lent partners, capable of acting quickly in an 
emergency. Neither of them ever questioned the 
good faith or the good judgment of the other. 


THE BOOKKEEPER vi 


They acted with the speed and accuracy of acro- 
batic partners on adjoining trapezes. 

Mrs. Neilson had received from Norma a most 
accurate description of her love affair. As she 
listened to it she nodded knowingly. ‘Big flashy 
guy and a country kid’ — and although Norma 
winced a little at being compressed into so brief a 
formula, she acknowledged its accuracy. One day 
as they rode together in the trolley, there was a 
block in the traffic which held up not only the car 
in which they rode, but pedestrians as well. 
When Mrs. Neilson turned to make an impatient 
remark to her companion, she saw her rigidly 
staring with an absolutely bloodless face out of 
the window, and, following her glance, she saw on 
which figure it was focussed. 

With the speed of a cat, she gripped Norma by 
the arm, and started to drag her from the car. As 
she afterward explained — ‘How was I sure it 
was him? How long do you have to look at a 
donkey to see him?’ (and she didn’t say donkey, 
either, she used another word). ‘You go make a 
date with him for noon at Tim’s office,’ she com- 
manded in a whisper. ‘I’ll call the police,’ and she 
flew to the nearest telephone into which she 
hurled the words: ‘Come to Tim Neilson’s coal 
office at noon and pinch a masher.’ 


I2 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


As for Luman, now that a year had passed with 
no trouble resulting from his flirtation, it had 
seemed safe to come back. He had no fears of any 
complications with Norma. In fact, the whole 
matter had slipped into the background of his 
mind, so that the sudden apparition of her pale 
face staring at him from the crowd, for an instant 
almost drove the blood from his own cheek. He 
stopped to talk with her because he dared do 
nothing else. He could not have a crazy woman 
hunting him up at his hotel or dogging his foot- 
steps on the streets, and she looked perfectly 
capable of doing either. As a matter of fact, she 
had no idea what she was doing. She automati- 
cally repeated the words which Mrs. Neilson had 
put into her mouth, and she stared at Luman like 
a death-mask, only because once having fixed her 
eyes upon his face, she did not know how to take 
them off again. In the meantime the traffic had 
started on, and Mrs. Neilson was at Norma’s 
elbow to pilot her back to the car. Norma had 
been overtaken by a nervous chill, and her teeth 
were chattering like sleet against a window. Her 
friend took a grim satisfaction in leading the 
shaking girl close to the traffic policeman, so that 
he might see her face, hear her teeth rattle, and 
draw his own conclusions. Being a man of experi- 


THE BOOKKEEPER 13 


ence, he drew them, and exchanged a comprehend- 
ing glance with what he afterwards described as 
the ‘little blonde wildcat.’ Then he did not re- 
move his gaze from the retreating Luman until 
the tall Stetson hat was lost in the distance. 
Norma was finally dragged into Tim’s office 
and propped into a chair. Her friend was deter- 
mined that Luman should not be stalking the 
streets of her city unless Norma was by his side. 
If that could not be, let him take to the road ‘like 
the rest of the dirty bums,’ she said. It was soon 
clear that Norma could not be depended upon to 
do or to say anything rational. She evidently had 
not the least idea of what was being said to her, 
and still less capacity to say anything for herself, 
Mrs. Neilson fairly shook her with impatience, 
then like a shrewd general, she turned defeat into 
victory. ‘Well, if you’ve gone crazy, sit there and 
gibber,’ she said. ‘I don’t know but it shows off 
what he done to you more than anything you 
could say. After all, the movie actresses don’t 
talk,’ she commented to herself, ‘and they get it 
across.’ So she patted Norma on the back, and 
stood by the window waiting for Luman, who 
presently arrived. When he saw three figures 
where he had expected to see but one, he realized 
that something serious was being staged, and 


14 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


turned to leave. But his exit was prevented by 
three policemen, one of whom remarked, ‘That's 
him, all right.’ 

As Luman turned again to enter the room, 
Norma rose and started toward him. She had 
thought of him constantly for over a year. His 
face had been in her thoughts by day and in her 
dreams by night. She was at present in such a 
thoroughly distracted state that she had entirely 
forgotten the circumstances under which they 
were meeting after so long a separation. She 
could hold but one idea in her mind, and that was, 
that Luman was here. He had come back as she 
had dreamed a thousand times. 

Norma had never been a beauty, and what 
good looks she had, had been sadly impaired by 
her trouble. But as she walked toward Luman, 
her face flushed, her eyes unnaturally bright, her 
lips half parted, her whole bearing transfigured 
by her absolute devotion, she dominated the room 
with her presence. Like a radiant sleep-walker, 
she moved toward Luman, but Luman did not 
move to meet her. Instead he backed away until 
the policeman barred his passage. Then he stood 
glaring past her with stony eyes. Norma drew 
closer to him with her hands outstretched, but 
Luman stared at her without a change of expres- 


THE BOOKKEEPER 15 


sion. Then his voice broke the silence, ‘I never 
knew the woman,’ he said slowly and deliberately. 

At first Norma hardly seemed to understand 
him. Then the brutality of his words hit her like 
a blow between the eyes. She staggered back 
against the filing-cases, the vividness in her face 
and bearing quenched in an instant. The live 
coals in her eyes turned to cinders. She looked 
almost idiotic. In the moment of stillness follow- 
ing his denial, the unconscious plagiarism of his 
words was intensified by the faint crowing of one 
of Tim’s roosters in the yard outside. 

But there was one moment of stillness only. 
Then the floodgates of Mrs. Neilson’s indignation 
broke loose. She strode over to Luman, her face 
blazing with scorn and contempt, and stood in 
front of him. ‘You never knew her, yousay? You 
never saw her before? She looks like a girl who has 
just seen you for the first time, don’t she? You 
come here, you sneak, you hound, you — you 
MAN,’ in an ascending climax of abuse, and she 
pointed toward the next room. Luman hesitated 
a moment, then he preceded her through the door 
like her prisoner. Tim looked after them in alarm. 
But his alarm was not for his wife. He was 
genuinely concerned for what his diminutive wife 
might do to this hulk of aman. ‘Go easy, kid,’ he 


16. OTHER. PEOPLE'S? DAUGHTERS 


called after her. But the slam which she gave the 
door did not indicate that his advice was to be 
heeded. 

Luman and Norma’s avenger were closeted to- 
gether for nearly half an hour. Then the door 
opened, and Tim’s wife, flushed with triumph, 
marched out of the reom with her head in the air. 
Behind her stumbled the figure of Luman, a sorry 
copy of what he had been when he went in. His 
face was aflame and his eyes were red. He had 
placed his wide felt hat on his head for quick de- 
parture, but had then forgotten it, and its un- 
steady perch pushed back from his forehead, gave 
him almost a clownish aspect. When he reached 
the middle of the room, Mrs. Neilson stopped 
him, and standing at one side proceeded to de- 
monstrate him as if he had been a freak in a side 
show. ‘He has a bad memory, this guy,’ she said. 
‘He forgot that he knew Norma, but his memory 
is coming back and he is remembering a lot more 
things that he had forgotten, too. Four! A wife 
and three children. Queer how they’d slipped his 
mind. He can’t remember when he left the “‘ Pen”’ 
last either, says he can’t remember ever being 
there, but that’ll come back to him, too, I guess, 
if he thinks long enough.’ Then from contempt 
her voice changed to irony. In the smoothest and 


THE BOOKKEEPER 17 


most silky tones she purred to Norma, ‘But it’s 
all right, girlie. He says he’ll give you a nice big 
check. How about a swell fur coat or a string of 
pearls? That'll make it all right, won’t it, dearie?’ 
Norma made no verbal answer, but she shook her 
head violently from side to side, without raising it 
from her arms. 

‘What? She don’t want a check?’ cried Mrs. 
Neilson in mock amazement. ‘She must be crazy. 
Here is a man who made love to her, and then in- 
sulted her, and she says she don’t want his money. 
Well, take a good look at her,’ she commanded 
Luman. ‘That’s one girl who didn’t make love to 
you for cash. You’re not likely ever to see an- 
other. I hope the rest of them have sense enough 
to wreck your bank account. I’d make her do it,’ 
she added to the others, ‘if I thought he had one 
— the poor boob. But I’ll bet he’s in debt for that. 
swell hat.’ Luman said nothing to all this, and the 
other men were equally at a loss what to do next. 
If Luman had demonstrated to Mrs. Neilson’s 
satisfaction that he could not marry Norma, and 
if Norma refused to take a money settlement, 
there seemed to be nothing to do with the man 
but to let him go. They did not venture, however, 
to decide this for themselves. But when Mrs. 
Neilson suddenly stopped glaring at her captive 


18 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 


and bent over Norma with her cheek against her 
friend’s hair, the police sergeant inquired respect- 
fully what she wanted them to do next. She called 
over her shoulder, ‘I don’t care what you do with 
him. Throw him to the cat’ — and then to their 
astonishment she began to cry, murmuring over 
and over into Norma’s ear, ‘ Poor kid, it’s a darn 
shame. They ain’t worth it, Norm’, they ain’t 
worth it.’ 


The encounter with Luman had at least the 
merit of being decisive. Since Norma no longer 
took comfort in her dream world, she came back to 
a world of fact, and took notice of what was going 
on around her. She attended church regularly, 
from which in due time a slender blond young 
man used to accompany her home in the evening. 
Mrs. Neilson was enormously interested in this 
development. Although she took no risks of say- 
ing the wrong thing to Norma, to Tim she re- 
marked, ‘He looks like a sap, but I guess it’s all 
right this time. This guy’ll stand without hitch- 
ing.’ It was not fair to George to call him a sap. 
Small and blond he undoubtedly was, but he was 
no fool. He had come from a town like East Eden, 
and Norma seemed to him like the girls at home. 
He ran a Ford repair shop, and Norma had first 


THE BOOKKEEPER 19 


attracted him by the ready way in which she 
grasped the problems of his business. Her natural 
business imagination reveled in managing his 
affairs as it had dreamed over Luman’s specula- 
tions. She often felt that she could make some- 
thing out of George’s shop, although she had no 
illusions that she could make anything out of 
George. One evening on the way home from 
church George asked her to marry him. He felt 
very tender and sentimental in the moonlight. 
He was sure that Norma was the smartest and 
most desirable girl whom he had ever known, all 
of which he told her, shyly, but with genuine 
feeling. Norma stood still in the path while he 
talked, and he could feel her arm growing rigid 
under his. Then she said, ‘I’m not in love with 
you, George, but I couldn’t marry you if I were. 
I’ve been a bad girl. I was going to get married 
once, but the man went off and left me because 
he had a wife. And then I had a baby. And it’s 
dead. There, now you know.’ And with that she 
started off down the path by herself. But George 
hurried after her and gripped her again by the 
arm. He made her turn around and face him. 
It had not been easy for him to listen to this con- 
fession hurled at him with no warning, and from 
a girl like Norma. As a rule he did not think 


20 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


quickly and it took him some time to make up his 
mind. But in this moral emergency he showed a 
decision which he lacked in ordinary matters, and 
he rose to the occasion at once. That was what 
made the impression on Norma. ‘Never mind it, 
Norma,’ he said, looking her in the eyes, as she 
now realized that Luman had never done. ‘I'd 
marry you if you were a widow. And the way I 
look at it, it’s about the same thing. You lost your 
first husband the same as if you’d been married to 
him, and I want to be your second. You won’t 
lose me.’ The dignity and straightforwardness of 
this immediate grasping of the situation took 
Norma’s breath away. His moral integrity 
eclipsed his physical and social shortcomings. 
Norma accepted him because she had no emo- 
tional weapons left with which to combat such 
kindness. And so they were engaged. 

Curiously enough, although Norma’s thoughts 
were much more on George’s business than on her 
own, there was nothing about him that irritated 
her so much as to hear him talk about it. His 
ideas of money were so inadequate. His caution 
allowed him to venture no farther than an account 
at the savings bank, ‘and what you really would 
like to do,’ she sniffed, ‘is to tie it up every Satur- 
day night, and hide it in the mattress.’ At such 


THE BOOKKEEPER 21 


periods of exasperation she would protest to Mrs. 
Neilson that she never could go through with it. 
‘I just can’t stand having such a dumb-bell 
around,’ she scolded. But her wise friend would 
urge, ‘Sit tight, dearie. There’s something wrong 
with all of them. It might as well be that as 
something worse.’ And then Norma would re- 
member how George’s face had looked in the 
moonlight when she told him her story, and she 
would realize that she had no power within her to 
send him from her now, even if she had really 
wanted to. 

So the wedding was set for September, and, of 
course, the girls at the office were deeply interested 
and eager for details, of which Norma volunteered 
but few. 

‘She acts kind of funny for an engaged girl,’ 
said the head stenographer, who was also engaged 
and behaved quite differently. ‘You would think 
it was her funeral and not her wedding she was 
going to. But then she always has been kind of 
queer.’ So they got her a bunch of flowers and a 
handsome cut-glass dish, and the chief clerk, who 
was considered quite a joker, made the presenta- 
tion speech. 

The burden of his remarks was to the effect that 
the great thing nowadays, was not to get a man, 


22 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


but to keep him. ‘Let me tell you, Miss Norma, 
he went on, warming to his theme, as the giggles 
and ‘ You’ve-said-its’ of the girls testified that his 
audience was with him—‘Let me tell you that 
the big idea is to hang on to ’’em. I’ve never seen 
your young man, but if he is too showy, you'd 
better watch out. ~Handsome is as handsome 
does, and unless you’re thinking of moving to 
Utah, be sure he hasn’t got a wife already.’ With 
these graceful and much-applauded words, he 
presented the flowers and the cut-glass dish. 
Norma received them with a very fixed smile, 
which she knew was mechanical, but which she 
was unable to remove. Neither could she say any- 
thing. The kind-hearted girls, touched by the 
fact that she seemed so deeply moved by their 
gift, chattered volubly so that her silence might 
not be noticed. When the attention had turned 
a little from herself, Norma escaped from the 
group and did not return. 

Half an hour afterward, when all the girls were 
back at their typewriters, the little filing clerk 
whispered to the head stenographer: ‘It’s funny 
how excited Norma is over her wedding. I just 
went out to the coat-room to get my handker- 
chief and there was Norma standing with her head 
against the wall, and she was crying something 


THE BOOKKEEPER rae. 


awful. She wouldn’t let me do anything. She 
said she’d be all right, that she was only nervous. 
But maybe her fella don’t treat her right, or 
something,’ she added doubtfully. ‘No, I don’t 
believe it’s that,’ said the head stenographer, who 
was considered an authority on these matters. 
‘They say he’s a real steady fella. You’d know 
that sort would be the only kind that a quiet girl 
like Norma would look at — or who would look 
at her,’ she added in a slightly patronizing voice. 
‘She was just upset over our surprising her with 
that expensive present. You could see that it 
made her real nervous. She felt it a lot. She’s a 
nervous girl anyhow,’ she added. ‘I’ve noticed 
that she’s never been the same since she had the 
appendicitis.’ ° 


i oe st 
iG i, ae hay 


| a Be, , ay eri iy 
Ae x bi) oa i we ‘a a as 


Rone na as zi 
a ae ee 1 oa) 


oy ay Nas "s Ny 
Nad palette) wen a ey 
pre 


i apthen Ne a in 


aa 


re 2) 
ny Winey 





II 
THE ALIAS 


STHEMAUIAS 


Daydreams are the imaginary fulfillment of 
wishes. There is a tendency, exceptionally strong 
in early life, but sometimes lasting into maturity, 
to supplement and alter the facts of life as they 
are, by imagining them as we wish that they might 
be. Runaway boys and girls are usually exces- 
sive daydreamers, who attempt to escape from the 
facts of the outer world to an inner world of fancy, 
which is more flattering to their self-esteem. Day- 
dreams excessively indulged in may in some cases 
become even more real to the dreamer than the 
facts of reality. 


II 
PAB ALTAS 


‘LorNA DooNnE?’ ‘No, ma’am, I don’t think I 
was named after a book. I think it was a cookie, 
or something,’ said Lorna Doone sweetly in 
answer to the matron’s question. However she 
came by her name, it certainly seemed to fit her 
well. She had long brown curls and a delicate 
profile which she turned a little to one side as 
much as to say — ‘Since I am so pretty, why 
shouldn’t I have a pretty name?’ ‘I’m nineteen,’ 
she went on. ‘I was born on the first of June, 
1908,’ she added after a little hesitation. ‘And I 
am an orphan. My mother died when I was a 
baby, and then my father died, and now my 
grandmother is dead. I got to get a job, and I 
think I'll be a nurse.’ 

It was indeed a sad situation — so young, so 
beautiful, and alone, and her life to be dedicated 
to the sick. The only intrusion of brute fact into 
the tender picture was that the lady at the desk 
was quite certain that ‘Lorna Doone’ cookies 
had not appeared on the market in 1908; that 
even if they had, that did not make her nineteen; 


28 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


and that beautiful unsheltered orphans are rather 
rare. The chances were that Lorna had christened 
herself at a recent trip to the grocery store, and 
had set out to see the wor.d. Nothing would 
swerve her from her story, however, and so she 
was given a lodging at the club, and a night to 
think it over. 

Lorna was left to herself the next day. This 
evidently made her quite uncomfortable, and she 
seemed to be thinking deeply. In the evening, 
after much whispering with some of the other 
girls, she tapped at the matron’s door and entered 
demurely. 

‘Are you ready to tell me who you are,’ the 
matron asked, ‘or do you want to think it over a 
few days longer?’ 

Lorna showed not the faintest flicker of sur- 
prise or dismay at this challenge. ‘I guess I may 
as well tell you the truth,’ she said dreamily. ‘I 
was afraid you wouldn’t like it, so I didn’t tell 
— but Iam going to be an actress.’ She gazed 
from under her long lashes to get the full effect of 
this startling announcement. - 

‘Really,’ answered the matron briskly. ‘Is it 
the chorus or the screen?’ 

‘It’s the films,’ replied Lorna eagerly. ‘I came 
ap here to see a fella I met once, and he said I’d 


THE ALIAS 29 


make a swell actress. They give you a thousand 
dollars for clothes to start, and a hundred a week 
while you’re learning. Of course you get more 
when you've learned, but you start on that,’ she 
continued with satisfaction. ‘I seen him twice at 
the hotel and he’s going to bring me a contract — 
me and three other girls.’ 

‘What’s the man’s name?’ asked the matron in 
a business-like tone. 

Lorna hesitated. ‘I don’t know his name ex- 
actly, and the girls just called each other ‘‘dearie.” 
But they’re awful nice girls and he’s a swell fella, 
too,’ she added with much enthusiasm. 

‘Well, what’s your own name?’ continued the 
matron. ‘I suppose you know your own name if 
not theirs.’ 

‘Yes,’ laughed the girl. ‘It ain’t Lorna, it’s 
Paula. Paula Pinkheart. The fella said that 
would make a good stage name, too. I was named 
for my uncle who died in the war,’ she added. 

‘The last war?’ asked the matron. 

_ Paula looked a little blank. ‘Or maybe it was 
the Spanish war,’ suggested the older woman. 

‘Yes, that was it. He died in Spain,’ answered 
Paula in a pensive tone. 

Then after a pause, during which the matron 
was silent — ‘Can I go out to-night? I gotta see 


20. OTHER \PEOPLE'S;DAUGHTERS 


that fella or I won’t get that job, and a hundred 
dollars a week is pretty good for a beginner.’ 

‘Paula,’ said the matron severely. ‘I only call 
you that because I’ve got to call you something. 
But you can’t leave this place until you tell the 
truth. I can’t have one of my girls telling such 
lies. What is your real name?’ 

Paula’s eyes began to fill with tears. Then she 
put her head down on the table and sobbed. 

‘I think that you would feel better if you told 
the truth,’ said the matron kindly. More sobs. 
Then a faintly muffled ‘Celia’ emerged from the 
buried head. 

‘Celia?’ echoed the matron. 

‘Yes, my name is Celia Claymore, and I forged 
a coupla checks. So I run away here from Chi. 
The girl who roomed with me, she stole all my 
clothes, so another girl she told me to forge a 
check and buy some more. So I did.’ 

‘I am sorry to hear this,’ said the matron. 
‘But I don’t think that I can learn another name. 
We shall call you Paula while you are here. The 
girls have already made it Polly and that’s easy 
to say. Good-night.’ 

‘Good-night,’ whimpered Polly. ‘I’m awful 
sorry I told you those lies, but I was so scared 
they’d get me,’ and she trailed upstairs — her 


THE ALIAS at 


sobs very noisy until she reached the landing, and 
then subsiding quite briskly. 

Telegrams to Chicago failed to substantiate 
any charge against Celia Claymore or any one re- 
motely answering her description. The usual 
number of checks had been forged, but none by an 
extraordinarily pretty young girl with long curls. 
Moreover, the clothes which Paula was wearing 
were not new, and an examination of her bag re- 
vealed only a nightdress, a silver spoon, and two 
glasses of grape jelly. People seldom forge checks 
in order to buy grape jelly. It was evident that 
the truth was yet to come. Plainly, Paula could 
not be hurried. 

A few days passed without incident, and Paula 
began to get restless. During this time the checks 
had not been mentioned, which was evidently a 
good deal of a disappointment to her, and besides, 
she hated the name Polly — it sounded so differ- 
ent from Paula. 

When the matron finally noticed that she was 
hovering rather persistently in the offing, she 
knew that it was time for another interview. So 
she summoned her to her room. 

‘Isn’t it about time to tell the truth, Polly?’ 
she said. ‘You know that you forged no checks. 
You wouldn’t know how. What did you do?’ 


32 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


‘I didn’t do nothing,’ sobbed Polly, now quite 
skillful with the water-works. ‘What could a poor 
girl do? When my mother died, my father went 
off, and I just went out and met a fella, and he 
said to come with him and so I did. And I kept 
house for him in a little bungalow. I had to live 
somewhere and he treated me swell,’ she sobbed. 

‘And where was the bungalow?’ asked the 
matron. 

‘New York. And I ain’t Polly. Peggy’s my 
name, Peggy Ryan.’ 

‘I suppose the bungalow was on Fifth Avenue, 
wasn’t it?’ asked the matron helpfully. ‘Most of 
the little bungalows are on the avenue.’ 

‘Yes, ma’am, kind of on the side where the 
trees are,’ sniffed Peggy. 

‘In Central Park maybe,’ suggested the ma- 
tron. 

‘I don’t know just where. The fella always 
took me out in a swell car. I didn’t go out alone. 
That fella thought a lot of me.’ 

‘Polly,’ said the matron decisively, ‘I don’t 
want any more such stories from you. What is 
your real name and where do your parents 
live?’ 

Polly’s head was again on her arms and her 
tears flowed freely. ‘In Pittsburgh,’ she wailed. 


THE ALIAS 33 


‘Why did you run away?’ continued the ma- 
tron. 

‘Because a fella I met insulted me and I didn’t 
dare go home.’ 

‘What fellow?’ 

‘A fella I met on the street. He took me off to 
ride and I was afraid my father’d kill me, so I 
ran away. You want my father’s name? He’s 
Wallace Lemare, 15 Central Avenue, and my 
name is Winifred Lemare. They always call me 
Winsome for short.’ 

Having confessed her sad tale, Winsome then 
retired to the upper story to repair the ravages of 
her recent tears, and to tell an admiring crowd of 
girls all the details of her latest incarnation. The 
matron had begun to frame a telegram to Pitts- 
burgh, when the doorbell rang. A stout woman 
with a red face and distressed eyes stood upon the 
threshold. She entered and sank heaving and 
breathless into a chair which creaked beneath her 
weight. 

‘Is Aggie here? Aggie Pack?’ she asked anx- 
iously. ‘I’m just about dead looking for that 
child. I ain’t slept for a week, and the mister, he 
can’t hardly work. They said you’d know about 
her, maybe.’ 

‘Is she a very pretty girl with long curls?’ asked 
the matron. 


34 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 


‘Yes, that’s Aggie,’ sobbed her mother, ‘and 
us living only three blocks away all the time and 
dragging the pond down to her grandma’s where 
we thought she’d drowned. Is she here? I'd 
better go and tell her papa,’ said Mrs. Pack, ‘he’s 
so worried.’ And she started toward the door. 

Then she hesitated, and her face became even 
redder than before. But its hue came not from 
heat, but from embarrassment. She moved to 
the matron’s side and whispered. ‘You may be 
kind of surprised at the mister,’ she said; ‘he’s 
peculiar. It don’t bother me, but I just wanted 
you to know that he was peculiar. He’s a good 
steady worker in the rolling mill, but he has his 
ways. Aggie takes after her papa, I guess; she’s 
not much like me.’ 

With this she returned to the open door and 
called to a figure lurking outside — ‘Papa, you 
can come in. The lady says that Aggie’s here. 
Aggie’s all right.’ 

The matron was waiting with some curiosity to 
see the peculiarities of Mrs. Pack’s mate, as she 
ushered him in, but she was hardly prepared for 
what she saw. Mrs. Pack, still hot and heaving, 
sank back again to her chair with the fatigue of a 
heavy woman who has lost sleep for a week. But 
Mr. Pack stood, holding his green velours hat in 


THE ALTAS 35 


his hand, and bowed politely, bending at the 
waist. He wore a so-called ‘snappy’ suit cut on 
the Spanish model. The trousers expanded into a 
slight bell at each ankle where the legs were slit 
and trimmed with buttons. The waist-line was 
high with a satin sash, and Mr. Pack’s rather 
grizzled locks were plastered into long sideburns. 
What hair he had on his crown was pasted down 
with the same care as his side whiskers, but the real 
marvel was his face. Although quite evidently 
he was born to be a swarthy man, his cheeks had 
been massaged, cold-creamed, and adorned with 
rouge. His small features, which attested his 
paternity to the charming Aggie, were further 
adorned with red upon the lips, and it was plain 
that his eyebrows had received much attention. 

The matron gazed at him, as all women auto- 
matically must, with fascination. She wanted to 
turn him around like a wax dummy and see how 
it was done. Such absorbed attention naturally 
pleased and flattered Mr. Pack. He asked 
nothing more from the ladies than a fixed, atten- 
tive stare from every one he passed. But his 
self-respect demanded that — and he always got 
it. He was used to it. He expected it. He lived 
on it. He had wanted very much to find his 
daughter, and he wanted very much to make an 


36 OTHER PEOPLE’S. DAUGHTERS 


impression upon the ladies who had rescued her. 
Accomplishing both happy results at once was 
very pleasing to Mr. Pack, and he smiled fatu- 
ously. . 

It turned out that Aggie was fifteen, and that 
she had got into the habit of prinking so long in 
front of the glass before going to school, that she 
had failed to learn the required portion of the 
Declaration of Independence. She had thereby 
flunked the history course and was afraid to tell 
her mother. After leaving home supposedly for 
her grandmother’s, she had sent a note that she 
was about to end her unhappy life by drowning. 
‘I suppose I have been kinda sharp with her some- 
times, and kinda close with the jelly,’ sighed Mrs. 
Pack. ‘But it takes so long to make it, and Aggie 
and her papa spread it on so thick that some- 
times I put it outta sight so as to keep some on 
hand. I never could make as much as Aggie wants 
if I spent my lifetime at it. And Aggie sees her 
papa dolling up, so she wants to,’ she continued in 
an aside to the matron. ‘It seems pretty foolish 
to me, but there,’ she added in defense of her 
family, ‘the mister don’t drink nor gamble. He 
gives me his pay regular, and I guess if he and 
Aggie do kinda brag on their looks it ain’t as bad 
as what lots o’ women suffer with their husbands 


THE ALIAS 37 


and daughters. Yes, she and her papa goes to the 
pictures real often. The mister says he likes to 
take a pretty girl to a show, and no girl’s any 
prettier than our Aggie. All her girl friends are 
crazy over the shows, and lots o’ times her papa 
takes them all. I get kinda sleepy myself, and my 
glasses don’t fit very good for distance, so I don’t 
take much interest in ’em, but Aggie’s friends and 
her papa, they keep the run of the serials and 
know all the stars, don’t you?’ she asked, and the 
simpering Mr. Pack nodded assent. ‘Aggie never 
goes any place but the picture show with her girl 
friends and her papa. The picture house is just 
around the corner. That’s what surprised me so 
when she said she’d run off and got drowned. It 
wasn’t like her. She never done anything like 
that.’ 

The news of her parents’ arrival had in the 
meantime been brought to Aggie and she ap- 
peared shyly on the scene. She wept her tearful 
greetings on their shoulders, and her equally 
tearful good-byes to the girls who had been, dur- 
ing the week, so satisfactory an audience. The 
reunited family then recovered its composure and 
started out the door. But as they reached the 
sidewalk they hesitated. 

‘Where shall we go? Home or to the pictures?’ 


38 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


asked Mr. Pack of his family. ‘Aggie ain’t seen 
any pictures for a week, have you, Aggie?’ he 
asked, in a tone expressing sympathetic regret 
that one week should have been so lost. ‘There’s 
a swell film at the Beejew and a new serial just 
beginning called the “Trials of Trixie.”” Wanta 
gor’ 

Mrs. Pack paused and sighed, ‘You go if you 
wanta,’ she said. ‘I’ll go home and get these 
shoes off. They hurt. Supper’ll be ready when 
you come, but I guess I can’t stand any more ex- 
citement to-day.’ 

‘All right, Ma,’ agreed Mr. Pack. ‘You go on 
home and Aggie and me’ll see the show. Aggie 
needs a little fun after getting so homesick, don’t 
you, Aggie?’ 

The world of facts being thus disposed of in the 
person of Mrs. Pack, the world of fancy held full 
sway. Aggie and her father hurried delightedly 
toward the enchanted palace of the pictures. 

‘The first installment ended where Trixie was 
kidnaped by the rich crooks,’ Mr. Pack explained 
ina whisper. ‘They raced her off in a big limou- 
sine to a hall underground. It’s awful exciting,’ 
he assured her. 

‘It sounds swell,’ sighed Aggie contentedly, as 
they passed through the door. 


Ill 
THE NEW HOUSE 


THE NEW HOUSE 


Human wants or Wishes are the basis of human 
activities, and the satisfaction of these wishes con- 
stitutes wealth. That which, for any reason, a 
person heartily and persistently desires, will dom- 
inate his attention, and by so doing will infallibly 
start and sustain action toward its attainment. 
The clash between the fundamental wants of 
foreign-born parents, and the wants of their Amer- 
ican-born children, with a different social inherit- 
ance, and the ensuing conflict in their standards 
of what is socially desirable, is at the basis of many 
family catastrophes. 


Ill 
THE NEW HOUSE 


WHEN the tired business man gets into his 
machine at the end of a wearing day and drives 
home, he longs for a quiet evening with his 
family, or perhaps a ticket to the ‘show’ where 
he can watch some pretty girls dance. When 
Lena Denko folded her apron at five o’clock and 
spread a cover over her power machine, she and 
the other tired factory girls had similar longings 
to those of their employer — with this difference. 
They did not want to watch pretty girls dancing. 
They wanted to be the pretty girls who danced. 
Dancing was their ruling passion. They were 
young and they were vigorous, and just as the 
débutantes on the Heights could play tennis all 
the morning, and golf all the afternoon, and still 
wish to dance all night—so Lena and her 
friends of the Acme Wire Factory could operate a 
machine for eight working hours, dance during 
their lunch period, down the corridors, through 
the hallway, and in the cloakroom, and wait im- 
patiently for their evenings at the Eldorado where 
they could continue dancing until the lights were 


42 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 


put out. All the other sports and activities which 
they could not afford, which they had no time for, 
and which they had never heard of, were concen- 
trated in the walk, the toddle, and the trot. And 
yet, as Lena started home after the whistle blew 
that Friday evening, she knew that her chances 
either of a quiet home evening or of foxtrots at 
the Eldorado were about equal. In fact they both 
exactly equaled zero. She and the other girls in 
her section often discussed the matter among 
themselves, but their arguments came to the same 
deadlock. All of their fathers forbade dancing at 
the Eldorado, and all of the girls were determined 
to do it. Elsie was the only one of the four who 
had hitherto had the courage to flout her parents’ 
orders, extract the bills from her own pay enve- 
lope, accept an invitation from one of the wire 
men, and dance at the Eldorado until the band 
played ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ for the last time. 

‘I got away with it,’ she whispered to the less 
adventurous three: ‘and, Gee, it’s swell. And 
I’m going again to-night, because my dad, he’s 
going to his lodge. He’ll be out late himself and 
too drunk to know.’ 

‘Who are you going with?’ inquired Lena, 
fascinated. 

‘With my girl friend,’ whispered Elsie. ‘There’s 


THE NEW HOUSE 43 


always lots of extra guys at the Eldorado. It’s 
easy to pick them up. Come on, Lena,’ she urged. 
‘You can dance the trot fine. You'll get plenty of 
partners.’ 

Lena turned from her machine mournfully. 
‘My dad would kill me if I went,’ she sighed. ‘I 
wish he would, anyhow. I wish I was dead now.’ 

Such was Lena’s state of mind over her pro- 
spects. What was the use of being a good dancer 
if one could never dance? She took her pay en- 
velope with its $13.33 in silence and walked 
slowly home in the rain. She did not even dare to 
open the packet and gaze upon the reward of a 
week’s work. Only when the envelope was 
tightly sealed would her father believe that its 
contents had not been tampered with. Her money 
was merely a family tax. She had no sensation of 
having earned it, nor any pride in its possession. 
Taxation without representation might be tyr- 
anny, but Mr. Denko was building a house, and 
every penny earned by every Denko was neces- 
sary for its completion. Sore as she was, even 
Lena could not deny that a larger house would be 
more convenient. 

As she entered the kitchen, Mrs. Denko was 
trying to prepare the evening meal with the two 
little girls hanging on to her skirts, and the two 


44 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS | 


little boys running in and out with much clat- 
Lou. 

They seemed to be playing some game which re- 
quired incessant dodging around and under the 
table on which the dinner was to be eaten. Chris, 
the eldest son, was taking off his wet boots by the 
stove. The baby was screaming violently, and, 
as Lena entered, her mother thrust him into her 
arms — ‘There, take the kid,’ she groaned. ‘He 
won’t stop yelling, and I’m about crazy.’ Having 
given Lena the baby, she shoved the two little 
girls after her into the next room, and adminis- 
tered an ineffectual cuff to the boisterous boys, 
who nevertheless continued their game of dodg- 
ing as before. 

The room into which Lena went with the chil- 
dren held her cot, and that of her sister Bella. It 
was also the parlor, but on account of the rain out- 
side, Mrs. Denko had been obliged to string up a 
clothesline in here, as well as in the two bedrooms, 
‘on which a wash was drying, The wet clothes 
hung in front of the looking-glass so that Lena 
could not comb her hair, but indeed the baby was 
clawing at it so vigorously that prinking would 
have been useless. She played with him faint- 
heartedly. She was really too absent-minded to 
bother with him, and the two little girls clinging 


THE NEW HOUSE 45 


to her skirts fretted her, because they would not 
leave her alone. 

The other rooms were both bedrooms. In one 
Mrs. Denko slept with the baby and the two little 
girls, and in the other Mr. Denko slept with the 
two little boys. Chris slept on a mattress in the 
kitchen. They needed a larger house, and it was 
the dream of Mr. Denko, a dream which he had 
brought with him from the Old Country, to own 
a good-sized house and to be monarch of his own 
acre. He was even now in his own room, noisily 
talking over the final costs with a carpenter. 

Much as they all knew the house was needed, 
no one but Mr. Denko felt the slightest elation at 
the prospect of having one. The only land which 
they could afford to buy was miles away from 
their present neighbors, and Mrs. Denko dreaded 
new ones whose language she could not speak. 
It was many miles away from the children’s 
school, from Chris’s poolroom, and from the 
Eldorado. Although Mr. Denko could catch a 
ride to work in a friend’s truck, the others must 
walk half a mile of unpaved road to a street car, 
in which they would cling to a strap for inter- 
minable distances both morning and_ night. 
Moreover, despite Mr. Denko’s steadfast dream 
that his children would soon be marrying and 


46 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


renting rooms from him in the new house, his 
children had no intention of doing anything of the 
kind, and Mrs. Denko knew that they would not. 
But she was unable to convince her husband that 
such an arrangement would never be agreed to 
by the unaccountable younger generation. It was 
so sensible and so thrifty that Mr. Denko was 
certain that they would, and that was an end to 
it. There was to be a cow in the yard — ‘just 
like the Old Country’ — boasted Mr. Denko, 
and to Lena this was the last touch of ignominy. 
If any suitor ever ventured so far as to come to see 
her, which she doubted, he would be faced by 
a cow. She knew how it would look. It would be 
just like her grandmother’s. She buried her face 
in the pillow. She felt that she could not bear it. 

Meanwhile her father'accompanied the carpen- 
ter noisily to the door, and then turned to his 
family with satisfaction. ‘Well, I guess we get 
into our new house soon already,’ he announced. 
‘We move out of here as soon as the rent’s up.’ 
The silence which greeted this statement aroused 
his temper, as it always did when he monologued 
on his one subject of passionate interest, the 
house. ‘So you don’t none of you want a new 
house? You all like this pigpen?’ he asked an- 
grily of the group. ‘Who am I building it for but 


THE NEW HOUSE 47 


you and the kids? You don’t know nothin’,’ he 
finished more specifically to his wife, who was 
trying to engineer the meal on to the table be- 
tween the scuffling boys and Chris who was shav- 
ing at the sink. 

Mrs. Denko knew emphatically that she did 
not want to go to a half-finished house on a new 
and lonely street, far away from her friends, even 
if the house was owned by Mr. Denko. Its owner- 
ship seemed a luxury far too dearly bought, and 
she knew that her children agreed with her. But 
they all came from a race where for generations 
land has been the only wealth, and where the 
father of the family is its lord. So none of them 
spoke, although their silence increased his irrita- 
tion. 

‘Who am I building for?’ reiterated Mr. 
Denko. 

‘For yourself, and you know it damn well,’ 
muttered Chris through his lather. 

‘What did you say?’ demanded his father. 

‘Supper’s ready. Better eat it hot,’ interposed 
Mrs. Denko diplomatically. 

‘Eat it,’ snorted Mr. Denko, his anger rising. 
“Who'd pay for what we eat? None of youse, if 
you could help it.’ 

At this statement, whose implications the chil- 


48 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


dren thoroughly understood, Chris drew his pay 
envelope out of his pocket, opened it in their 
presence, extracted five dollars for himself, gave 
the rest to his father, and returned, without 
words, to his shaving. Mr. Denko grunted and 
turned to Lena. 

She handed him her envelope without opening 
it, and then, in a voice which astonished herself 
as much as her hearers, she said, ‘I’d like five 
dollars too.’ 

Mr. Denko’s jaw dropped, and even Chris and 
her mother turned and stared. The four small 
children, feeling that something was afoot, stared 
also. They were accustomed to family scenes and 
could feel the electricity in the air. 

‘What d’ya want five dollars for?’ Mr. Denko 
managed to gasp. 

‘A dress,’ murmured Lena faintly. 

‘A dress! Ain’t you got a dress on?’ 

‘I want another one. This ain’t no good,’ said 
the voice in Lena’s throat which she felt to be 
talking on without her control. 

Mr. Denko was fairly speechless for a moment, 
and then the flood broke. ‘A dress? You want to 
be like damned American girls who stand showing 
off on the street corners. You got one dress and 
you want another one, when we ain’t got no 


THE NEW HOUSE 49 


money to pay for plaster, and got to live in that 
house all summer without paint on the walls. 
Can we live all winter without plaster and without 
paint? Tell me that. I see you going wrong, be- 
cause you are with damned American girls in that 
factory, and I tell you I’ll get you another job by 
that carpenter’s brother. He’s got a laundry with 
good Hungarian women. He'll pay you fourteen 
dollars. You go to that laundry Monday and 
you don’t need no new dress.’ And he would have 
gone on elaborating this theme had not the ex- 
pression on Lena’s face made him pause. She 
was gazing at him with the color gone from her 
cheeks. 

‘Hungarian laundry by that carpenter’s 
brother?’ she echoed. 

At this moment Bella opened the door wet and 
hungry after a day at the ‘Five and Ten,’ but 
paused on the threshold as she scented trouble. 
The whole family was therefore assembled as an 
audience for Mr. Denko’s answer: 

‘Yes, by that carpenter’s brother,’ he re- 
peated. ‘Them American girls with their dresses 
and their dancing are no good. You be better off 
by good Hungarian working-women. And if 
Bella gets smart and wants dresses, she can go 
there too. That carpenter’s brother is good fella. 


50 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Maybe he marry one of you,’ he added with 
a fatherly attempt at rough coyness. 

But this was too much for Lena. ‘Marry that 
Hunky! Marry that Hunky!’ she screamed 
hysterically, and, thrusting the baby into Bella’s 
arms, she turned and threw herself on Chris’s 
cot, sobbing and groaning, ‘I wish I was dead.’ 

Of course, the groans were not entirely occa- 
sioned by the suggestion that she marry the car- 
penter’s brother. Even Lena had too much sense 
for that. This estimable widower was merely the 
last straw in a nervous strain compounded of work 
without hope, of dread of a new raw home among 
strangers, of resentment over her attached wages, 
of the failure to get a new dress, and of the con- 
viction that never in a long and weary life would 
she have the chance to foxtrot in fairy-land with 
the happy beings who crowded its waxed floor. 
The best dancer in the Acme to be buried in a 
‘Hunky’ laundry! Her only escape a widower 
with three. Lena’s screams relieved her feelings, 
and she continued to utter them. 

Bella turned to Chris and murmured in a loud 
aside — ‘Marry old Matthew? Hot Dog!’ 

This was too much for Mr. Denko. He turned 
to Chris. ‘So Matthew is a dog, is he? Ain’t 
your sisters chickens, what they call? Ain’t old 


‘THE NEW HOUSE 51 


dog better for chickens than fox or weasel? You 
want your sisters going around like American 
girls, no skirts, no stockings, no shawls on their 
necks, no sleeves on their arms? What you want 
your sisters to be? Girls on the streets? Ain’t it 
better to marry a good fella and keep outta 
trouble, than go round like crazy fools, so no fella 
will marry them? Don’t they want no husbands?’ 
he inquired somewhat helplessly of his wife. ‘Do 
they think a good husband’s just going to buy 
them dresses? You bet he ain’t,’ he added with 
emphasis, sure of his ground on this point. 

Never could righteous orator have had a more 
unwilling audience. His rhetoric was gall and 
wormwood to Lena, and to Bella as well. As for 
Chris, he wanted nothing so much as to be out of 
it. He was by no means a prude as regards him- 
self, and he had a distinct taste for the kind of 
‘chicken’ whom his father so scornfully described. 
In fact, he was in a fidget lest he miss a date with 
one of them at this very minute. On the other 
hand, he was fearful lest his own sisters might 
behave as did various wild young women of his 
acquaintance, and so disgrace the family. He 
privately wished them both safely married to 
somebody — anybody — so that they were safe 
and out of danger. 


52 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Mrs. Denko by some maternal intuition, or 
repressed girlishness, understood her daughters’ 
aspirations in a way that neither their father nor 
Chris ever could, and she dreaded the contest of 
wills which she knew was inevitable. She had 
succumbed to Mr. Denko for a lifetime, but she 
well knew that her daughters would neither 
succumb to him, to Matthew, nor to any one like 
them. As for the five younger children, none of 
them were interested in their father’s speeches. 
All of them were hungry and clamoring for food. 

Mr. Denko made one last angry outburst. 
‘You girls better be glad if some fool, any damn 
fool, marry you before it’s too late. Some good 
hard-working fella—  He’ll show you where you 
get’ (he hesitated for his adverb) ‘where you-get- 
uP!’ Bella glanced at Chris whose face was a 
mask. Then she ran over to Lena, and the two 
girls began to whisper and giggle hysterically. 
Chris, buckling on his ready-made tie, refused to 
look at either of them, but Bella shrieked at 
him, ‘Say, Chris, Lena says that if old Matt tries 
to show her how to get Up, or get By, she’ll show 
him how to get ouT. Where we get Up! What 
language is that? Oh the bees’ knees!’ — and 
again the girls rolled in hysterical laughter, while 
Chris with a red face, bent only on meeting his 


THE NEW HOUSE 53 


appointment with his girl, snatched his hat, and 
slammed the door behind him. 

His children’s jokes were all that ever reduced 
Mr. Denko to terms. Only a few days before, he 
had entered the room scrubbed and dressed for 
his lodge meeting, his big black mustache care- 
fully waxed until it gave his face a ferocious and 
manly appearance. This mustache was his one 
claim to personal distinction, and he had admired 
it for twenty years. He secretly marveled that 
Chris steadfastly refused to raise one. But when 
Chris rushed in and asked for his hat, Bella had 
glanced at her father, and then, with a nod in his 
direction, had asked Chris why he didn’t look on 
the hat-rack. Then the three elder children had 
suddenly screamed with such unaccountable 
laughter that Mr. Denko and the baby had had to 
laugh too, although both were equally innocent of 
any inkling of the joke. For all his laughter, Mr. 
Denko had felt vaguely uncomfortable. What was 
Torallwaboutr? ‘Hat-racks’ ts Hot! dogs‘? and 
‘bees’? It was too much. He now sat abruptly 
down to his supper and began to eat. When the 
girls’ whispers struck him as suspiciously long- 
continued, he ordered them to eat too. They ate, 
but they ate silently, and neither of them ate 
much. 


54 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


After the dishes were washed and the five 
younger children put to bed, Lena announced that 
she intended to follow them. Bella agreed that she 
also was tired, and the door closed behind the two 
sisters for the night. Their voices could be heard 
for a time in animated whispers. Then they 
apparently went to sleep. 

Of course, if Lena had intended to go to the 
dance with Elsie when she left the factory, she 
was even more determined now. Her uncertain 
future made the Eldorado appear as a golden 
opportunity to be snatched now or lost forever. 
Bella was her confidante, and was so sympathetic 
that she agreed to stay away from the dance her- 
self only because of the fact that she had not been 
invited. It was agreed, however, that an invita- 
tion should be provided for her on the next occa- 
sion, and if it worked to-night, there would be 
many occasions. Lena met her friends by way of 
the window, and, fortified by much rouge to 
divert attention from her working dress, she went 
with them to the Eldorado. As Elsie had pro- 
mised, they had no difficulty in securing partners 
from the many young men who waited, scuffling, 
outside the door. 

But just as the promised land was reached, and 
Lena’s dream of happiness was about to be real- 


THE NEW HOUSE 55 


ized, she saw with horror that Chris and his girl 
were on the floor, slowly but inexorably gliding 
in her direction. She dragged her partner into the 
dusky hallway, and almost sobbed into his ear 
that she did not dare to’dance for fear that her 
brother would tell on her. ‘I’m not just afraid 
he will, I know he will,’ she repeated, so excited 
by her adventure and its catastrophe that she 
could hardly speak. 

‘I gotta go home,’ she moaned. ‘I gotta go 
home, and go quick.’ 

‘Aw — don’t go home,’ said her partner sooth- 
ingly, although he agreed with her that they had 
better avoid trouble. ‘I know another dance 
joint that’s better than this. We’ll go there. A 
guy I know runs it. You’re too good a little 
dancer to go home yet.’ And before she quite 
realized what was going on, she found herself 
driving with her unknown escort to what he 
assured her was a much finer roadhouse several 
miles away. 

‘That’s swell,’ Lena giggled in a reaction of 
nerveus relief now that she had escaped Chris’s 
eye. Then after a pause, ‘Say, kiddo,’ she asked, 
‘what name do you go by? I didn’t catch it when 
we was introduced.’ 

‘My name is Jack Dempsey, and it’s the Prince 


56 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


of Wales’s place we’re going to,’ answered her 
friend, putting his arm around her. 

‘Ain’t you comical?’ giggled Lena again. “Say, 
don’t get too fresh.’ 


On Monday night Lena met her father at sup- 
per. She looked excited and flushed, but there was 
a kind of courage about her too, a courage which 
only the possession of money can give. Both her 
father and her mother were in the kitchen, but 
Lena’s business was with the father. 

‘You’d better let me stay at the Acme,’ she 
said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘They 
raised me to-day, and I get more than I would at 
the laundry.’ At this she took out a new five- 
dollar bill from her purse, and laid it on the table. 
‘Take that,’ she said, her eyes glittering. ‘It will 
help pay the plasterer.’ 

There was a moment of silence. Mrs. Denko 
looked blankly at her, and then turned and bent 
over the stove. Mr. Denko gazed doubtfully at 
the bill and then at Lena’s eyes which still stared 
at him with a metallic glitter. His own glance 
dropped and he hesitated for a moment. But his 
fascinated eyes could see nothing but the new bill 
upon the table. It blocked his vision, and blotted 
out every scruple. With a grunt he took the 


THE NEW HOUSE 57 


money, thrust it in his pocket, and turned away. 
Lena gazed for a moment at the backs of both 
her silent parents. Then she gave a short laugh, 
stepped quietly into the front room and shut the 
door. 


‘But why blame it all on your father, Lena? 
How did he know where you got the money?’ 

‘He knew all right. Where did he suppose I got 
it? I’d be likely to pick it off a bush, wouldn’t I?’ 

‘But you told him you got a raise.’ 

‘Do they pay a five-dollar raise on Monday? 
Friday’s payday, ain’t it?’ 

‘Maybe he didn’t know that factories don’t 
raise a girl’s wages that way.’ 

‘He’s a working-man himself. He knows damn 
well they don’t.’ 

‘But why don’t you blame your mother too? 
She knew as much as he did.’ 

‘She had a hunch. But what could she do? 
She’s all right, but she can’t do nothing. She 
can’t even talk American.’ 

‘I suppose that we just can’t realize how much 
your father wanted to get into that new house.’ 

‘Nor how much we kids wanted to keep out of 
tb. | 

‘How long before Chris found you out?’ 


58 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


‘Two months.’ 

‘How much money did you give your father?’ 

‘Sixty-seven dollars besides my wages.’ 

‘Did he take it and ask no questions?’ 

‘Sure he did. Sixty-seven ‘‘plunks”’ is quite a 
help toward plaster.’ 

‘What does he say now?’ 

‘He says now, I can’t come in the old hole. 
It’s too good for me.’ 

‘But he feels badly over what you’ve done. 
You know he does.’ . 

‘Sure he does. But I'll bet he feels worse that 
they found it out before the house was paid for. 
He’d feel more comfortable cussing me in a house 
out of debt.’ 

‘Lena, be just to your father. He is a proud 
man. He feels terribly over the disgrace.’ 

‘If he was so good, why didn’t he stop it?’ 

‘I suppose that he longed so hard for that house 
to be out of debt, that he never stopped to think 
about where you got your money.’ 

‘That’s just it. He thought more about the 
house than he did about me.’ 

‘What do you think he should have done, 
Lena?’ 

Long pause and slow answer. ‘I don’t know no 
one’s duty, Miss, but I know this. It don’t pay to 


THE NEW HOUSE 59 


love money too much, and to want more things 
that it buys than you can afford. It don’t pay 
whether you’re rich or poor. My father 1s a poor 
man, but he loves money just like the rich men 
do. Maybe it’s gold and diamonds that are lux- 
uries for them, but paint and plaster was luxuries 
for him, and a new dress was a luxury for me. A 
house is all right if you can afford it, but he 
couldn’t. And a house you can’t afford is as bad 
as diamonds you can’t afford, ain’t it? We all 
want something we ain’t got, and we go crooked 
to get it. That’s about the size of it.’ 

‘But, Lena — a house is more necessary than 
diamonds, or even a new dress, isn’t it? It’s more 
thrifty.’ 

‘Maybe it is, Miss. But if my father had given 
me the dress I wanted, instead of buying the 
house he wanted — if my father, instead of some 
other guy, had thrown away his money on me 
— he might not ’a’ been so thrifty, and we might 
’a’ been crowded — but I wouldn’t ’a’ been here.’ 


. yA NEP AAS ie 4 ety erty TAY 
seu ie : Aba A iy ay: ht Ni NE ‘ eran 
Aa ] TAA As) Oe Ve oh ed oft 


ve er Mt Wy oh 


, 
« 


Sy i 
Ae 


"7% 
; 
Dh) \ ' 
és hE OAL 
4 oy Pr 
/ Bie 


CA ys 
A athe) 


) ia say 1 Yano Ry 


Wa 


ag 
bP r'ggy Wan 
lM os Sh ae 





IV 
BULLIEVE ME! 


BULLIEVE ME! 


Words as a symbol of thought, are essential if 
human beings are to be able either to think clearly 
or to express themselves to each other. The ab- 
sence of an adequate vocabulary in which to ex- 
press one’s emotional life, often has the serious 
consequences of forcing the emotion to express 
itself prematurely in more crude and direct ways 
than words, and, particularly with young peo- 
ple, forces crises which might have been averted 
if action might have been deferred by adequate 
speech. Sports and play, with their accompany- 
ing words and actions, perform the valuable func- 
tion of filling an otherwise vacant, wordless, and 
hence dangerous leisure. 


IV 
BULLIEVE ME! 


IF she is rich and if her suitor comes to call, there 
are many resources by means of which he may be 
entertained. He may motor with her, or he may 
dance. He may be taken to the garden or the bil- 
liard room. And always he may be fed. All these 
amusements still hold good, even though both 
the lady and her lover may be dull as well as rich. 
If conversation flags, there is the Victrola, or ice 
cream. And there are tickets to the opera, where 
even the dullest lady may smile sweetly, and 
where even the most ponderous escort may at 
least call a taxi, and provide flowers and candy, 
if not wit. 

Moreover, if both lovers are poor, but have 
intelligence and resource, romance may still 
flourish. Even though the boarding-house has no 
room for callers, there is the park. Books (bor- 
rowed and not bought) may be read, and all the 
world discussed. An educated though frugal pair 
of lovers on a bench beneath the bough, with a 
book of verses and a sandwich, unless they are 
too tired, and too worried, need little pity from 
any one — as many of them will testify. 


64 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


But suppose the lovers belong to that large 
group which has no training, no resource, and no 
vocabulary. Suppose that the Victrola and the 
matinée are equally unattainable, and that the 
rooming-house affords no privacy for a courting 
pair. There is still the park-bench, but there is no 
taste for verses. No ability to discuss them, or 
anything else. It is spring, and there is spring 
restlessness and a desire for happiness. One 
working day is over and another looms all too 
near. They share the human urge to escape to a 
world of dreams. But how can all this be ex- 
pressed by lovers who have little imagination, no 
abstract ideas, and no words? 

Have you ever listened to them from a neigh- 
boring bench? 

‘Bullieve me, he wuz scme guy. He says, 
“Hello, girls,” he sez, and I sez, “‘ Hello, yourself.” 
And he sez, ‘‘Where you going, cutie?”’ and I 
sez, “I ain’t goin’, I’ve been and got back.” 
That’s what I told him, and you’d oughta seen 
him. Gee, he looked as though he’d lost his 
buttons. Bullieve me, I can tell a guy where to 
get off. “Just watch my smoke,” I sez. And he 
sez, ‘ You’ve said an earful.” And I sez, “Bul- 
lieve me, you’ve said it,” I sez.’ 

But eventually the anecdotes are exhausted, 


BULLIEVE ME! 65 


and no conventional phrases, however sparkling, 
were meant to last a whole evening. What next? 
Never shall I forget the scorn with which one girl 
answered me when I asked of a certain dull couple 
of our acquaintance: 

‘What in the world do they talk about?’ 

‘Talk,’ snorted she. ‘They don’t talk. They 
hug!’ 

How could the situation have been more briefly 
or more accurately described? 

With a country club or the matinée — or with- 
out them, if there is some training in social in- 
genuity — there may be legitimate aids to young 
people’s conversation. But when the occupants 
of the park bench have exhausted their slender 
stock of words and ideas, but still have emotions 
to spare, they indulge in the only activity which 
occurs to them which they can afford. 

Not long ago two young men came to our as- 
sociation office on a delicate quest. With some 
help from us, the information was extracted from 
them that they were apparently in search of 
wives. But how to get them? The girls they met 
upon the street were tough. The young men 
worked in a foundry where they saw no women, 
and their only sources of society, the street, the 
shop, and the boarding-house, offered them no 


66 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


chances for safe and sane romance. They were 
desperate. As a last resort they attacked our 
office, to be helped to meet some girls — object 
matrimony. ‘We even thought,’ said they, in a 
last impulse of self-depreciation and apology, 
‘that maybe there were two nice girls in a family 
way, who would be glad of husbands, even if we 
haven’t much money.’ Could any Sir Galahads 
offer more? No cross-questions discouraged their 
persistency.’ They submitted to examinations of 
their mentality and their bank-books. Both were 
slight, but satisfactory. What could any philan- 
thropists do but promise introductions? 

Such are the anomalies of human nature, how- 
ever, that the few girls whom we knew, who were 
indeed in need of honest young husbands, refused 
even to look at the well-meaning suitors. Like 
the rest of us they hated pity and they showed 
considerable spirit in refusing even an introduc- 
tion to men who might have felt that their com- 
pany was a favor conferred. But some other pro- 
tégées, not in so embarrassing a situation, an- 
nounced themselves as ready to meet any young 
men who cared to call. Despite our assumed 
nonchalance, a sixth sense told them that some- 
thing interesting was afoot. The club parlor was 
selected as the place and Thursday evening as 


BULLIEVE ME! 67 


the time. Promptly at seven-thirty the bell rang, 
and two dumb young men, eager for romance, 
were presented to a group of girls as eager and as 
speechless. Had they been rich, there might have 
been a theater party or a supper. Had they been 
resourceful, there might have been parlor games, 
music, or lively conversation. But they were 
neither. There was no room for dancing, and no 
music. Nor was there any desire to dance if there 
had been, for no girl cared to dance with any but 
the guests, and these were only two. Silence, 
utter silence. In desperation, the matron, who had 
considerately left them to themselves for a few 
minutes, was recalled. Only she could force 
answers from shy young swains by endless ques- 
tions, and yet not at the same time invoke the 
jealousy of the girls by such a monopoly of the 
conversation. Suffice it to say, that after several 
calls, by some means or other, two of the more 
determined girls were wearing rings and making 
preparations for their weddings. How was it 
done? Surely not by words. And how would it 
all have ended had not the club doors been open 
to them, had not the matron been ready for first 
aid to the speechless, and had not the character 
and intentions of the young men been avowed as 
‘honest’ before the calls began? 


68 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Some weeks ago there fell into our hands a’ 
letter whose obscenity was almost past belief. 
It was written by a young workman to a girl 
under our guardianship, and, since its indecency 
was so flagrant, it seemed to justify an investiga- 
tion. The young man responded promptly to our 
summons, but as he entered the office, even those 
of us who are somewhat accustomed to incon- 
sistencies in conduct, stared at him in surprise. 
Instead of a ruffian, there stood a rosy-cheeked 
boy, carefully dressed in his best clothes for the 
call, and with his mouth drawn down to a suitable 
Sunday expression. Fearing lest we had the 
wrong man, we placed the letter before Mike. 

‘Did you write it?’ we asked. | 

‘Yes, lady, I did,’ said he. ‘I hadn’t oughta 
done it, but she was the only girl I had, and she 
went with another feller.’ 

No other explanation could he give. His girl 
was a flirt. He was angry with her, and he told 
her so in the only words he knew. 

‘What good did you think such a letter would 
do?’ we asked. ; 

‘I was mad,’ he answered simply. 

‘Where did you hear such words?’ 

‘IT work with a steam-fitter all day, just us two. 
He says those words, so I said ’em.’ 


BULLIEVE ME! 69 


‘Why don’t you get another girl, instead of 
insulting this one?’ we inquired. 

‘Because I don’t know any, and I liked that 
one.’ 

‘Do you expect any girl to come back to you 
after a letter like that?’ 

‘She would if she liked me, but she don’t,’ he 
said sadly. 

Silence. Finally, after some study of Mike’s 
disconsolate face, we ventured: 

‘Mike, you sound as if you were lonesome, so 
lonesome that you did not care what you said.’ 

Quickly he leaned over the table with the first 
sign of life in his eyes. 

‘Lonesome, lady, you’ve said it. Lonesome is 
what I am. I don’t know anybody else, and I 
liked that girl.’ 

He stalked out of the room with a lingering 
sidelong glance at his enchantress who sat outside. 

Did we imagine it, or was there a flicker of 
forgiveness in her eyes, as he gazed miserably at 
her? Had she merely meant to administer a 
rebuke as preface to a later pardon? Did she 
really understand, as well as we, that his furious 
jealousy was a tribute to her hold on him, and that 
his words were a mere accident due to the fact 
that he had no legitimate language of emotion? 


70 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


If a man is wretchedly angry, he must express it 
somehow, and to a woman it must be in words. 
If any fine phrases of passion are unknown to 
him, he must use the only forceful words in his 
vocabulary. Mike’s confused obscenities were an 
attempt to express a jealousy as overwhelming 
as Othello’s, just as-‘Shake a leg, chicken,’ would 
be his way of saying, ‘Come into the garden, 
Maud.’ 

Recently I was honored by an invitation to be a 
member of a committee to provide instruction for 
working-girls — girls of intelligence, but no social 
training in American ways. Various plans were 
suggested for filling the gaps in their education, 
but with the memory of many awkward courtings 
in my mind, my one request was this: ‘Give girls 
who are poor, the equivalent of what rich girls 
get at dancing school, in dramatics, sports and 
games. Teach them how to entertain their beaux 
— beaux who are without money, without poise, 
and without words, but who long, like the rest of 
us, for beauty and romance. Teach them fifty- 
seven varieties of entertainment — by twos, by 
threes, and by roomfuls. Teach them how it can 
be done with more words and less “hugging.” 
For they need to know — bullieve me!’ 


V 
ESTELLE AND SAM 


ESTELLE AND SAM 


Adaptation of one’s own personality to that of. 
one’s relatives, is one of the prime requirements 
of family life. Young people who have not been 
trained to such adaptability during their forma- 
tive years, by normal family relationships, find it 
almost impossible in later life to maintain a nor-. 
mal home of their own. They tend to escape the 
irksomeness of family requirements by means of 
desertion, vagrancy, and resistance to any tie that 
forces the adaptation of their behavior to that of 
others. 


V 
ESTELLE AND SAM 


PeruAps the love-affairs of Estelle and Sam 
would not have impressed me so deeply if they 
had not been the first. But it had happened that 
on my earliest visit to the court-room, Estelle’s 
slim little figure was standing before the desk 
of the Juvenile Judge, while her sulky young 
husband glowered on the other side. Estelle was 
in tears, and Sam was in no pleasant temper, for 
the sermon he had just listened to from the Judge 
was not flattering. The facts were that Sam, 
despite his twenty-two years, had already mar- 
ried twice, and that he had both wives at once but 
supported neither of them. 

He was a rather handsome blond fellow with 
broad shoulders which looked fitted for work, 
although work was the last thing that interested 
Sam. He claimed that he had been tricked into 
his first marriage by a girl whom he met in Seattle 
when he was in the navy. After a short honey- 
moon she had disappeared, and Sam being trans- 
ferred to an Eastern city had no time nor money 
to look her up. He said quite frankly and de- 


74 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 


cisively that he did not care what had become of 
her, and that he had no money to spare for a 
divorce, even if he knew. So what was a young 
fellow to do? In the meantime Estelle had re- 
cently got out of the orphanage where she had 
spent most of her life. She was pretty in a slight, 
childish way, and had a pert, saucy manner of 
speaking which was attractive and passed for wit. 
She could read and write, but never did if she 
could avoid it. She could do simple arithmetic 
with equal dislike. So it was natural enough that 
she should play truant when she could, in order, 
to dance at Luna Park, and exchange repartee’ 
with the dancing partners whom she met at this, 
the only place she had to meet them. There was 
no anxious mamma to see that Estelle met an 
eligible young man. She had to do that for her- 
self, and her childhood at the orphanage, mothered 
by an overworked matron, had not trained her 
judgment in the selection of a husband. 

So Sam and ‘Stell’ were married, and the baby 
was born six wecks later in the Charity Hospital. 
For in the meantime, the news of Sam’s first 
wedding had got abroad and he had been in the 
workhouse, quite unable to provide care for his 
new wife and baby, even if he could otherwise 
have done so.” 


ESTELLE AND SAM 78 


Of course the weak point in Estelle’s case was 
that she had always known that Sam was already 
married, and reflection would have told her that 
even their belated wedding was rather ineffectual. 
But there was no doubt that she was much in love 
with Sam, and how should one expect her to re- 
flect? She was not a deep thinker by inheritance, 
for the records showed that her improvident and 
irresponsible parents had been very familiar with 
the court-room in which she was now standing. 
Moreover, her training had not cultivated any 
capacity which she might have had for foresight. 
She had been passed from an orphanage to in- 
dustrial schools and detention homes, with no 
more chance for individual initiative than a 
private in the army. What wonder, then, that 
when she was at last set free, and danced dur- 
ing long summer evenings with a sturdy young 
blond stranger, that it went to her head, and that 
his legal entanglements with an unknown lady 
seemed unimportant? 

And one must not be too hard on Sam. He 
himself was the product of a union in which the 
father’s part consisted mainly of desertion, varied 
only by reappearances to demand the moncy 
which his wife had saved up during his absence. 
Naturally enough, Sam had taken to the streets, 


76 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 


where crap-shooting and petty thieving had given 
him his conception of finance. And his other 
social affiliations had been such that he secretly 
thought that it was rather handsome on his part 
to have gone through any wedding ceremony at 
all, with either wife. He was utterly speechless 
before the Judge, but his face spoke his thoughts 
plainly: 

‘Why all this fuss? Estelle is all right, ain’t 
she? She has a ring that cost me five “bones,” 
hasn’t she? Hospitals are supposed to take care 
of kids, ain’t they? A fellow couldn’t support 
any one while he was in the workhouse, could he? 
How could he tell where his first wife was? 
Maybe she was dead. How did the Judge know 
she wasn’t? Anyhow [a glare of reproach at 
Estelle], if she doesn’t stop crying to the gallery 
for sympathy, I’ll give her something to cry about 
when we get home.’ 

Estelle began to grasp this last thought herself, 
and one could see her reflections in her face. 

‘ After all, it’s Sam I’ve got to live with, and not 
the Judge, or the witnesses. I’d better begin to 
play up, not to the gallery, but to Sam.’ 

These changes of front in the court-room oc- 
casion no surprise when one is a veteran in the 
law. But when witnessed for the first time it 


ESTELLE AND SAM = 


gives the observer a decided jolt, when the plain- 
tiff who has been telling without reserve of her 
own injuries and the infamy of her lover, suddenly 
changes her tactics, and testifies that nothing in 
the world shall separate her from her unworthy 
mate. Yet it was reasonable enough. For where 
else in the world had Estelle to go but to Sam? 
At least she counted for more in his life than she 
did in the life of any one else, and Sam on his side 
admitted that Estelle was a ‘cute kid’ when she 
didn’t ‘jaw’ too much. Moreover, both of them 
were rather interested in the baby, who bore a 
flattering likeness to his father. Sam, in expansive 
moments, boasted of his broad-shouldered baby 
as a future ‘pug,’ and ‘Stell’ hovered and fussed 
over it, as the first real blood relative that she had 
ever possessed. 

The Judge, beneath his fatigue and exaspera- 
tion, felt a great deal of sympathy for the undis- 
ciplined young couple, and upon Estelle’s prompt 
assertion that she wanted nothing so much as to 
live with Sam, and his sulky promise that he 
would turn over a new leaf, they went off side by 
side dragging the sleeping baby behind them in 
his go-cart. . 

They started housekeeping in a three-room flat. 
Sam had a job at twenty-five dollars a week, the 


78 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


first wife was somehow or other disposed of by 
the kindly judge, and the stage seemed set for 
living happily ever after. 

But it seems to be hard to begin living happily 
ever after if you have never been taught how to 
doit. Ina month Estelle called upon us, in tears. 
She was terribly lonesome, and Sam got mad at 
her for crying, which made her cry all the harder. 
If institutional life had trained Estelle for any- 
thing, it had trained her to enjoy a crowd. She 
had cooked with ten girls in the kitchen, and 
washed with twenty girls in the laundry. All her 
housewifely tasks had been accompanied by what 
is known as ‘joshing’—a gay kind of gossip, 
often pointless and sometimes unrefined. But in 
any case it was sociable and interminable, and 
Estelle had been rather famous for what was 
known as her ‘Marathon jaw.’ Now for four 
weeks Estelle had been living in solitude save for 
a husband who left at six-thirty every morning, 
and a baby who slept all the time. In the eve- 
ning, they could not leave the baby alone and go 
out together. Sam claimed that no young fellow 
could be expected to sit with a kid every evening, 
and Estelle retorted, that after ten hours of soli- 
tude she needed to get out more than Sam did. 
To this Sam replied, ‘What did you want to get 


ESTELLE AND SAM 79 


married for?’ And Estelle, who by this time was 
getting hysterical, screamed that she wished she 
hadn’t. Such a remark was, of course, a good 
excuse for Sam to snatch his hat and shout as he 
slammed the door, ‘I divorced one and I can 
divorce two,’ and Estelle’s last shot, ‘You'll get 
the workhouse for this,’ fell on no ears but those 
of the placid baby, whom his frantic mother now 
fell to kissing until he howled with her in unison. 

The first time this happened, Estelle was 
brought to reason rather quickly, and Sam, who 
was equally shamefaced over his fit of temper, did 
penance by taking both his wife and baby to a 
movie. Fora while quiet reigned. But it was only 
temporary. The outbursts began to come about 
once a week and sometimes oftener. In vain did 
Estelle’s friends plead with her to keep her temper 
and her tongue quiet. Her days of loneliness with 
no one but the baby to talk to irritated her so 
much that the sight of Sam coming through the 
door with the salutation, ‘Let’s eat,’ let loose a 
torrent of words, which Sam after a day in the 
coal yards was in no mood to listen to. As a 
matter of fact, Sam thought he had behaved 
pretty well. Three months of steady grind for a 
fellow used to short jobs interspersed with loafing 
and ‘shooting pool’ were beginning to tell on his 


80 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


nerves, and he, as well as Estelle, missed the easy 
give-and-take of his former crowd, who now 
joked him as he passed and called him a ‘family 
man.’ Being a family man is no slight under- 
taking if you have not been brought up to it, nor 
being a family woman for that matter. 

There came some-weeks when Sam did not 
show up at all, either at home or at his job, which 
he naturally lost. It was evident that, if Sam 
would not support the baby, Estelle must do so, 
and a place was found for her where she could do 
housework and board her baby near by. There 
were several servants in the house, so Estelle had 
the social life and conversation which she had 
previously missed, and the police finally succeeded 
in locating Sam and bringing him in to state his 
side of the case. His story was brief and to the 
point. He would agree to pay for the support of 
the baby, but no one could make him listen to the 
‘line of talk’ that Estelle gave him every night. 
Any one who had seen Estelle in a tantrum knew 
just what he referred to, but Estelle could only 
protest between her tears that although she knew 
she shouldn’t scold her husband, she could not 
help it. Her explanation of her temper threw so 
much light on all the girls of her type, that we 
never failed to think of it with other young people 


ESTELLE AND SAM 8I 


brought up as she had been. ‘I never could get 
any attention paid me in the Home unless I lay 
on the floor and kicked, and I don’t know how to 
ect anything any other way,’ she sobbed. *I know 
it makes Sam sore, but I just see red,’ she added. 

So the flat was given up, and for a time their 
affairs ran so much more smoothly, now that 
Estelle and her husband did not live together, that 
it seemed useless to urge them to try joint house- 
keeping again. The only difficulty was that Sam 
seemed still to have such a grip upon his wife’s 
affections. She asked for him continually, gave 
us pictures of the baby to give to him, and even 
made some of her especially nice cookies for his 
birthday. He himself had an odd way of making 
her an occasional call and taking her to a show, 
only to disappear again after having left his 
monthly pay for the baby who continued to grow 
up in his image. 

Then his visits became less frequent and the 
baby’s board money ceased altogether. Estelle 
harassed us with telephone calls and notes. 
Where was Sam? Was he going with another girl? 
Knowing his habits this seemed likely, and sure 
enough, on investigation, it turned out to be true. 
Reports came from various quarters that Sam 
and a sprightly brunette had been seen together at 


8277. OTHE RGR EOPEE S21 DAUGHTERS 


several balls, despite the fact that on one occasion 
a friend of Estelle’s had been careful to let the 
dark lady know that Sam was already married. 
Sam did not deny the charge. It must be said in 
Sam’s favor that he never did deny it. He always 
maintained that he did not have to lie; they came 
without it — all of which was sadly true. How- 
ever, the dark lady laughed scornfully, and the 
next we heard was the frantic voice of Estelle 
over the telephone informing us that she had it on 
good authority that Sam had married again. An 
inquiry at the marriage license bureau proved that 
she was correct, and that Sam had once again 
ventured upon matrimony without the formality 
either of a divorce or of removal to another city. 

If ever Estelle had a tantrum, she had one then. 
There was no doubt that she was fond of Sam. 
Whatever she had done before she met him, she 
had not swerved from her devotion to him since 
their marriage. She could do everything in the 
world for him but hold her tongue. And now that 
he had left her for another woman she made no 
effort to hold it. ‘She would get him and get him 
good.’ ‘She would show that black-faced girl 
where she got off,’ and so on, and so on. So the 
charge was made against him by his wife, and 
once more, within a year and a half, Sam stood 


ESTELLE AND SAM 83 


betore the Judge’s desk and faced the charge of 
bigamy. 

He and Estelle had been married in another 
State, which necessitated some delay in looking 
up the record of their marriage, and during that 
interval Sam was committed to the workhouse. 
This left both wives at large in the same city. 
Suddenly we heard nothing of the affair. Estelle 
seemed to have quieted down, and to our astonish- 
ment we learned that she had succumbed to a 
morbid curiosity to see her rival and had called 
upon her at Sam’s new flat. From seeing her, the 
acquaintance had progressed so rapidly that the 
two girls spent all of their free time in one an- 
other’s company and were known to have had not 
only long confidential talks together about the 
man they both loved, but to have had luncheon 
with Sam as an invited guest on his release from 
the workhouse. Later, Sam was taken to see the 
baby, in whom he had shown much interest of late, 
and, to the consternation of all the friends, Estelle 
announced that she wished to drop the case. 

If a wife prosecutes her husband for bigamy, he 
can be put in the ‘Pen.’ But unless she or his un- 
lawful wife, or some one else is interested enough 
to pursue the matter, it drops of its own weight, 
and such seemed likely to be the fate of the suit 


84. OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


against Sam. Whether when he was faced with 
his former wife he had a revulsion of feeling in her 
favor, or whether it was the baby, who was a boy 
any man might be proud of —or whether it was 
the less sentimental prospect of three to five years 
in the ‘Pen’ — who shall say? At any rate, Sam 
was swinging back.to Estelle, who was looking 
very pretty and stylish in some new clothes she 
was buying by installments. His renewal of de- 
votion was the more easy, as the dark lady had 
other friends who were willing to console her, and 
it was rumored that she had given up the flat and 
sold the furniture. 

We saw little of Estelle during this period. 
Occasionally she called us up to say she would 
never speak to Sam again, and that she intended 
to begin the prosecution. But since the next day 
invariably brought a recantation, no one paid 
much attention to her. We were too thoroughly 
out of patience with them both to bother with 
them. Finally we heard that ‘Stell’ had taken a 
flat and that Sam was living in it, although his 
wife kept her housework position in order to pay 
the baby’s board. Apparently she had given up 
the struggle of trying to make Sam pay it, and he, 
without that responsibility, was willing to live in 
her flat so long as she paid the rent. 


ESTELLE AND SAM 85 


So that is how it stands. Sam is working and 
Estelle is working. Estelle is rather more steadily 
at work than Sam, and the baby’s board and 
Sam’s stylish suits are much more likely to be paid 
for out of her pocket than out of that of her re- 
claimed husband, although he pays her way hand- 
somely to an occasional show. 

So long as she does not live with him, she does 
not scold him quite so much, and so far Sam has 
not married again. There is no doubt that Estelle 
loves him, and there is no doubt that she loves the 
baby. There is no doubt that Sam is proud of the 
husky boy who resembles him so closely, and, 
while there may be some doubt as to how much 
constancy of affection Sam is capable of toward 
any woman, at least he has been married to Estelle 
longer than he has ever been married to any one 
else, and whatever his lapses in behavior, they 
have not as yet sent him again to the workhouse. 

Both Sam and his wife are on most friendly 
terms with the dark lady and with her husband, 
and they often play cards with them on a Sunday 
evening. They even joke about the resemblance 
between their two eldest children. 





vI 
GERTRUDE AND GUS 


GERTRUDE AND GUS 


The exhibitionistic impulse, strong in infancy, 
which is the desire to force one’s own person con- 
tinuously upon the notice of one’s associates, re- 
mains unusually prominent in some people, in 
their later life, especially if its normal develop- 
ment has been suppressed. The impulse to be no- 
ticed and to win approbation is in itself normal 
if kept within bounds. But it may be warped by 
early training into an absorbing appetite for at- 
tention, which is certain to cause friction in so- 
cial and family life. 

A constructive method of utilizing this impulse 
is by training the individual, through recreational 
and artistic expression, to be able to win legiti- 
mate praise because of creative achievement. 


VI 
GERTRUDE AND GUS 


OF course, the great trouble with Gertrude was 
that she didn’t start right. Her father, at the 
first hint of her arrival, had run away as fast as 
he could, and, while her mother could not do the 
same, it was not because she would not have been 
glad to. Although Gertrude was sixteen when we 
first met her, her mother was still blaming her for 
being born. ‘Gosh, that woman can’t forget it,’ 
said Gertrude with disgust. ‘I don’t suppose she 
did want me. But a kid can’t help being born — 
as I see it.” Which reflection seemed as just as was 
her further remark, ‘It seems to me it was as 
much her fault as mine.’ 

However, Gertrude’s mother absolutely re- 
fused to take any responsibility for her advent, 
and took no interest in her fortunes. Gertrude 
had been obliged to look out for herself, and it 
cannot be said that she had made a very good job 
of it. She told her story with that disarming 
frankness of a girl thrust out into a wicked world 
too young to develop the usual repressions of 
speech, from sheer lack of knowledge that any are 


90 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS | 


necessary. Goodness, badness, marriage or the 
lack of it, this fellow or that, truancy from one 
school, and raids in another hotel — all made up 
one muddle of experiences and escapades, from 
which one standard alone apparently emerged. 
Gertrude had decided that she wanted a HOME. 
Her ideas of what a home might be were certainly 
not derived from any of the rooming-houses oc- 
cupied by herself or her friends. But she had, as 
it turned out, a romantic nature, and, while other 
flappers went to the movies to thrill over the love 
scenes of their favorite stars, Gertrude found 
her inspiration in the kitchen and fireside scenes 
from ‘The Old Homestead,’ ‘Way Down East,’ 
and kindred dramas. 

‘I’d like a job where there was an old couple 
whose children were grown up, and who would sit 
around the lamp in the evening. I want to talk to 
the old lady and to call her mother, or grandma, 
or something.’ Gertrude was a romanticist, and 
while she was talking about her old couple she 
really meant what she said. But she had I hate 
to think how many years of restless habits behind 
her, and she could not change them all at once. 
So, the next time we saw Gertrude, although a 
home had been found for her, interest in the old 
couple had waned, and interest in Gus was at its 


GERTRUDE AND GUS oI 


height. Gus was a fireman, which meant, of 
course, that he had a good pair of shoulders and a 
uniform. Such a combination is damaging to the 
peace of mind of any girl of sixteen, but to Ger- 
trude it was fatal. A city employee, in uniform, 
who dashed through the streets on a red truck, 
and told tales of hairbreadth escapes from burning 
buildings — such was Gus, and he played his 
Othello to her Desdemona, pleased enough to 
have so breathless an audience. As for Gertrude, 
her head was completely turned, and her heart 
melted within her. We could not share her en- 
thusiasm over Gus. Shoulders he undoubtedly 
had. But his face was like a weasel, and his eyes 
were shifty. However, it was apparent that Ger- 
trude needed a home more than ever, and since Gus 
seemed, in his unmannerly fashion, willing to 
furnish it, there was nothing to do but to help 
them settle. Again Gertrude’s china-blue eyes 
gazed into ours with a frankness that seemed 
almost unearthly. ‘Gus always said that he would 
marry me if he had to, and now he has got to, and 
so he says he will.’ On this chivalrous basis, Gus 
and Gertrude went to the City Hall. There could 
be no church wedding, for Gus was a Catholic and 
Gertrude, for some reason, had decided that she 
was a Protestant. We could not discover why she 


92 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


thought so, until she said, cheerfully: ‘They say 
if you are Catholic you go to church, and I don’t 
go, so | must be a Protestant — and I won’t turn 
Catholic for any mutt.’ 

The theological question being thus settled, the 
ceremony was performed, and Gertrude trudged 
to their new flat full of hopes of having a home at 
last. It bothered us a good deal that both Gus and 
Gertrude had thought it necessary to stock the 
rooms quite so thoroughly with heavy stuffed 
furniture for which they were to pay fifteen 
hundred dollars, by installments. Being abso- 
lutely dependent upon Gus’s wages, which were 
not large, and with other inevitable expenses 
ahead, such very heavy rocking-chairs and 
such very large lamps seemed unnecessary in an 
apartment so small that one’s shins continually 
knocked against the carved and tasseled trim- 
mings. 

But this particular style of furniture had 
adorned the vivid scene in Gertrude’s imagina- 
tion, and now that she had a chance to see herself 
against so rich a background she could not bring 
herself to start with less. After all, she was only 
sixteen. So we tried to hope that their courage 
would last as long as the installments must be 
paid, and that Gus would fit into the rosy dream 


GERTRUDE AND GUS 93 


even better than the big, shiny ‘buffett’ fitted 
into the dining-room. 

Soon after this Gus lost his job. He had, at 
Gertrude’s urgent request, come home to keep 
her company one evening. She complained so 
much of being lonesome that her insistance, 
combined with his own desires, made him find a 
nap on the magenta sofa more comfortable than a 
chair at the firehouse. But awkwardly enough, 
there was a fire during his absence, so Gus wore 
his uniform no more, but became an unpictur- 
esque figure in overalls. Of course, this nettled 
him, and he was inclined to think it was Ger- 
trude’s fault. Gertrude was so accustomed, how- 
ever, to having everything her fault, that she 
worried little about it. She had more important 
things to think of just then, for she, in the mean- 
time, was trying to bring up her three-weeks-old 
baby on the hospital schedule — she who had 
never done anything on schedule time in her life. 
Naturally enough, one set of schedules was all 
that she could hold in mind at once. The furniture 
premiums were forgotten and the installment 
man gave his ultimatum. Inside of six months 
Gertrude and Gus were in a still smaller flat, 
very sparsely furnished, and three hundred dol- 
lars out of pocket —a small sum, after all, to 


94 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


have paid for six months of varnish and uphol- 
stery. 

But a baby and domestic cares were far from 
enough to slake the thirst of Gertrude’s romantic 
soul. Gus, whose temper had never been of the 
best, was finding the steady grind of loading 
box-cars much less to his taste than playing 
cards in the engine house with the other firemen. 
Moreover, a hot August with a fretful baby 
did not improve Gertrude’s disposition, and she 
missed the trips to the merry-go-rounds and the 
ice-cream parlors with which her previous sum- 
mers had been enlivened. So, when Gus reminded 
Gertrude, as he often did, that his fallen fortunes 
were because of her, she, in turn, reminded him 
that she had had many lovers more wealthy than 
he, and could have them now if she so much as 
winked an eye or dropped a handkerchief. As a 
matter of fact, Gertrude had done neither since her 
infatuation with her husband. Even six months 
of life with the grouchy Gus had not changed her 
love for him. But she had the theory, based on 
much meditation and consultation with her girl 
friends, that a husband with an attractive wife 
like herself should continue his love-making, and 
that he should with gifts and ‘shows’ express his 
appreciation of his good luck in winning her. If he 


* GERTRUDE AND GUS 95 


declined to do so, he must be made to by jeal- 
ousy. 

The dramatic device of forging letters to other 
people has often been made use of in fiction and 
on the stage, but Gertrude conceived the idea of 
forging one to herself. It was easy to see why this 
occurred to her, for her usual dramatic outlet had 
been recently suppressed. She had been a great 
patronizer of the circulating library which had a 
station in the local drug-store. From its shelves 
she treated herself to volume after volume of the 
most sugary and impossible fiction, which she 
read until late at night, and aggravated Gus past 
endurance by her absorption in it, and her quota- 
tions from it. One evening she propped herself 
with pillows on the kitchen floor, to read her 
latest romance, meaning by this pose, one must 
conclude, to arouse curiosity in her husband when 
he came home and found her there. But she in- 
advertently fell asleep. And when Gus arrived 
very tired and hungry, there he found her, in the 
middle of the floor, all the lights ablaze, and too 
deep in slumber to notice either the arrival of her 
husband or the hungry protests of her baby from 
the next room. 

This was too much. ‘Darned foolishness,’ 
snarled Gus. ‘Using the electricity reading a 


96 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


bunch of nonsense.’ So Gus prohibited the perusal 
of any more books whatever, and Gertrude, thus 
suddenly cut off from her principal joy, proceeded 
to write, if she might not read. 

The first fruit of her pen was a most outrageous 
love-letter from a mythical Charlie Cooms, which 
she left carelessly on the stove for Gus to find 
when he came in. Gus found it. The first we 
knew of this episode was Gertrude calling over 
the telephone in the hysterical voice which she 
loved to use — ‘Take me somewhere. Gus is 
going to kill me if you don’t.’ 

When we next saw Gus (we did not hurry), he 
was still shaking with wrath, and thrust the letter 
into our hands. The letter would have been funny 
if its disconnected anti-climaxes had not thrown 
such a sad light on Gertrude’s past. With a free 
hand to frame a lover to her own taste, she could 
construct nothing but a monstrosity. Charlie 
Cooms, if he had existed, would have been even 
more undesirable than Gus. But the handwriting 
was so plainly that of Gertrude herself, and her 
leaving it on the stove so obvious, that even Gus 
was convinced of its authorship. This conviction 
did not mend matters, however. If he was not 
now angry at her infidelity, he was even more 
enraged at her perverseness. A betrayed husband 


GERTRUDE AND GUS 97 


has some dignity; one who has been made ridicu- 
lous has none. Gus scemed to feel that his position 
as head of the house could be restored only by 
means of an application of his powerful fist. 
Gertrude said that he knocked her down, and we 
not only believed her, but we did not blame him. 
As Gus himself tersely remarked, ‘If she wants 
to kid me, she can take what is coming to her.’ 
Poor Gertrude, it was not the first time that she 
had been knocked down, nor was it likely to be 
the last. 

How any one could have the courage deliber- 
ately to bait the bear-like Gus was more than we 
could see — but Gertrude was determined to play 
the heroine in her imaginative drama, and she 
was equally determined that Gus should play the 
hero. After all, she was barely seventeen, spend- 
ing hot days and nights in a little flat with a 
heavy, fretful baby. The romance in her system 
was like a violent attack of the measles — it 
simply had to come out, or turn in and slay its 
victim. 

The next form of the attack was boarders. In 
a revulsion of feeling against having been an 
undutiful wife, Gertrude determined to be wifely 
to a fault. She would help out the family budget 
by taking a girl friend and an elderly rclative to 


98 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


board, and with the proceeds of the venture she 
would herself refurnish the flat so bereft of the 
adornment with which they had started their 
married life. 

In order to start off well with the boarders, it 
was necessary to begin the furnishing at once, asa 
kind of advance investment, and Gertrude found 
a hitherto unknown joy in shopping by corre- 
spondence. In their first venture, she and Gus had 
wandered through the shops buying what they 
saw. But Gertrude now discovered that no furni- 
ture in reality is half so dazzling as the description 
of it in the catalogue, and she was lost in the 
contemplation of ‘dressy dressers’ and ‘classy 
davenports,’ as if she had not been caught once in 
the installment mill. So, although she lived in a 
city with myriads of house-furnishing establish- 
ments, she placed a large order in a distant city 
noted for its ‘merchandising by mail.’ With the 
rather commonplace articles which appeared in 
response to her orders, the two boarders and their 
host started out on a domestic experiment. 

This was Gertrude’s plan. The boarders would 
pay her and she would pay for the furniture. 
When the debt was off her hands, she would buy 
presents for Gus and stylish clothes for the baby 
and herself. But everything went wrong from the 


GERTRUDE AND GUS 99 


very first. The elderly relative promptly lost his 
job, and could not pay his bill, and the girl friend, 
who was behind on the payments for her last 
winter’s fur coat, asked for an extension of time. 
This shortage in cash naturally affected Gertrude, 
who in turn asked for an extension on her own bill. 
But while she had been most good-natured in her 
response to her boarders, the furniture dealer was 
far from good-natured to her. If the furniture 
was removed for the second time, the boarders 
would have to go too, for there would be no place 
for them to sleep, nor any dishes for them to eat 
from. Moreover, if they left now, they would 
never pay for their back board. Obviously, Gus, 
instead of getting presents, must pay for the 
luxury of his house guests. In the meantime, the 
elderly relative, having so much time on his 
hands, was using it to flirt with the girl friend, and, 
as if this were not enough, Gus himself, as a slight 
compensation for so much trouble and incon- 
venience, began to join in the flirtation. Gertrude, 
flushed and unhappy over her steaming dishpan, 
would hear uproarious echoes from the next room 
where the two men were vying with each other to 
entertain the guest. 

‘Her owing me thirty-five dollars on her 
board, Gus takes her to a movie and leaves me 


100 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


with the baby — the nerve of that!’ sobbed 
Gertrude. 

The only solution to this tangle, which threat- 
ened to be not only a love-triangle but a parallelo- 
gram, was to send back the furniture once more, 
evict the boarders, and start again, only a few 
more hundred dollars in debt than they were 
when they were married. 

What next? Gertrude, having exhausted her 
dramatic possibilities of the wayward and the 
dutiful wife, selected as her next rdle that of the 
hysterical patient. She was seized with frequent 
attacks, which culminated in a particularly 
violent outburst of nerves outside of a movie 
theater. 

The attack was brought on by an argument as 
to which parent should carry the baby. Both of 
them firmly and noisily declined to perform this 
office, until Gertrude, having by a ruse got young 
Calvin Coolidge into his father’s arms, left him 
there, and, darting suddenly across the street, 
she marched home with her nose in the air. It 
would not have been quite so bad if the way home 
had not been past the fire-engine house where Gus 
had been formerly employed, and where his old 
pals, now seated at leisure in the doorway, were 
watching the whole affair with great relish. Ger- 


GERTRUDE AND GUS 101 


trude refused to cast one glance at these, her one- 
time dancing partners, or to answer their greet- 
ings. She flounced past them, her high heels beat- 
ing a quick tattoo on the pavement, her red cheeks 
blazing, and her long earrings waving in rhythm 
to her stride. Gus followed slowly, his face red- 
dened, not by rouge, but by wrath, gripping the 
howling baby under one arm. He was too utterly 
enraged to do aught but glare helplessly at his 
former colleagues. And although some of them 
were family men and privately sympathetic, what 
could they do, under the circumstances, but ex- 
tend cheerful inquiries for the health of himself 
and his family, and ask him how he enjoyed mar- 
ried life? 

If looks could kill, many corpses would have 
lined the streets that day. Poor Gus! One could 
hardly blame him for wanting to shake Gertrude 
until, as he said, ‘her teeth would rattle.’ Even 
Gertrude had misgivings, after this last episode, 
lest she had gone too far. She was obliged to think 
quickly. Gus would soon be at her heels, and this 
time she was really afraid of him. She thought 
of the novels she had read, and agreed with Gold- 
smith, that ‘when lovely woman stoops to folly,’ 
there gets to be a point where ‘the only way to 
give repentance to her lover and wring his bosom 


102 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


— is todie.’ But even in the face of instant death, 
Gertrude did not forget her rdle of dramatic 
heroine. Again a note was hastily penned and 
placed upon the stove, and as Gus, full of wrath, 
opened the door, Gertrude faced him with a box 
in her hand. Before he had a chance to utter what 
she knew was coming, she pointed tragically to 
the note, swallowed the contents of the box, and 
fell screaming to the floor. 

Poor Gus — again outwitted. He looked at the 
note which read as follows: 


DEAR FRIENDS, I am going to commit suicide, as 
soon as I finish this note. Gus has ruined my life, I 
have nothing to live for. 

Sincerely 
GERTRUDE 


P.S. I shall drink lie. Gus has given it to me. 
Good-bye, and love to all. Curses on Gus. 


Scrawled upon the margin of the note was an 
afterthought of maternal sentiment — ‘Please 
take care of baby’ —for, as Gertrude hastily 
recalled, no beautiful young mother dies without 
asking a cruel world to take care of her baby. 
The picture would not be complete without it. 

Under the circumstances, there was, of course, 
nothing for Gus to do but to call in a neighbor and 
a doctor. The neighbor, at Gertrude’s request, 


GERTRUDE AND GUS 103 


telephoned to us: ‘Come at once, Gertrude has 
just been murdered.’ When we arrived, the neigh- 
bor was administering such remedies as she found 
recommended by the cookbook, which the doctor 
later supplemented with a stomach pump. How 
much poison she really swallowed we never knew. 
But if the ‘lie’ did not make her feel sick the 
stomach pump and the cookbook, between them, 
certainly did. 

She and Gus were a very subdued couple when 
the affair was finally over, and Gertrude lay white 
and limp upon the bed. Nevertheless, there was 
a flicker of triumph in her eye. The little drama 
had been a success. Gus had been put in the 
wrong, and her little world was there to witness his 
discomfiture. The women who had gathered from 
the adjacent flats took up their cues as if they had 
rehearsed them. There were many encoutaging 
little pats given to the invalid, and much mur- 
muring of ‘dearie’ and ‘girlie,’ whereas nothing 
fell to Gus’s share but lifted elbows and averted 
shrugs. There was nothing for him to do but to 
accept the rdle of the repentant husband, and to 
behave exactly as Gertrude had intended him to 
behave when she staged the scene. 

The next day, after it was all over, and we were 
wondering what to do next, came the following 


104 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


note, which seemed to relieve us of any immediate 
responsibility: 


DEAR FRIENDs: Don’t expect any news of me. Not 
while I live. If you had not raved like lunatics, I 
would not have got so mad. I have had enough of you. 
In fact too much. I don’t think my husband likes you 
any too well, and I want you to know that there aren’t 
any things on earth I loathe as much as I loathe you. 
I am a good wife and mother, so stay away. I never 
want to see any of you again in my life. 


P.S. I don’t expect an answer. 


So this was the next act! Gertrude’s creative 
energy was enormous. She had evidently been 
planning the next installment of her serial drama 
before she had recovered from the effects of the 
last. And she had decided that not Gus, but we, 
should play the villain’s part. If she had cast us 
for the villain’s r6le we must play it, for no one 
can be a part of Gertrude’s life without acting in 
her dramas. But, despite the trouble which she 
gives us, neither Gus nor we will ever desert her. 
And if we do not desert her, it will be for the same 
reason. We all want to see what she will do next. 


Vil 
IRENE AND NICHOLAS 


IRENE AND NICHOLAS 


‘Compensation’ is the term applied to the ten- 
dency to make up for an organic defect by an 
extra-nervous effort. Thus, to escape from their 
crushing sense of physical inferiority becomes for 
some people the impelling force behind all their 
most vigorous action. 

The compensating energy which endeavors to 
make up to them for an organic defect, may even 
operate so strongly as to make them far above 
the average in the very skilled activity from which 
organic weakness might otherwise have debarred 
them. 


VII 
IRENE AND NICHOLAS 


WHEN I first saw Irene, she puzzled me. She was 
an extremely pretty girl, with large gray eyes and 
smooth pink cheeks which required no rouge. 
She was simple and direct in her answers, and 
her mental examination indicated an intelligence 
much above our average type, despite the fact 
that she had had little education. 

But such tragedy in her face! She answered 
every question briefly, and without once changing 
the stoical fixation of her eyes on some distant 
point out of the window. Her face was too young 
and smooth for lines, but in some subtle manner 
her tense mouth and stony eyes had nothing less 
than anguish written over them. 

I could not fathom her until, as my eye wan- 
dered over her charming person, it came to an in- 
voluntary stop — and she saw it. Her sensitive- 
ness felt my startled glance without looking at 
me. A slow flush crept over her face and her lips 
tightened. She continued to stare out of the win- 
dow, but I looked back at my paper and fiddled 
with my pen. Irene’s left sleeve was empty. The 


108 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


cuff was tucked into her coat pocket, but it was 
unmistakably a sleeve without an arm. It was 
only due to the fact that she had a pretty face that 
drew one’s gaze that I had not noticed it before. 

‘How long has it been gone?’ I asked. 

‘Two months.’ 

‘How did it happen?’ 

‘Wrecked in a joy-ride. Some fellas got rough 
and ran us in the ditch, and in three days, they 
took my arm.’ She almost hissed the last words. 
Then she turned on me. ‘Is there another girl in 
the whole world who has lost her arm? I never 
heard of one.’ And then, ‘They say I’ll get 
damages, but I don’t want damages. I only want 
my arm, and they can’t give me that.’ 

In situations like this, words are futile. But as 
I looked at Irene’s lovely face, I could not keep 
from saying: ‘Irene, you are so pretty. Girls with 
ugly faces can’t hide them, but you can hide your 
arm. An empty sleeve does not show. Most of 
us cannot get past your face.’ 

It seemed as if she had a right to some spoken 
recognition of her beauty since her pride had been 
so cruelly hurt, and for a moment a faint watery 
gleam of a smile did light through the gloom of 
her face. She knew that she was pretty and was 
ready to admit it. But since when have pretty 


IRENE AND NICHOLAS 109 


women been more resigned to mutilation than 
ugly ones? 

Irene shook her head. ‘No one sees my face. 
Everybody I pass stares at that sleeve. They see 
nothing else, and I think of nothing else. I 
suppose I never will,’ she added, and rose. ‘There 
is nothing you can do, you know. All I want is 
my arm, and you can’t give it to me.’ 

It is strange how suffering can sharpen not only 
the nerves, but the intelligence. Irene was only an 
ignorant girl, with no training, no family, and no 
fortune. Yet the experience through which she 
had just passed had brought her so close to the 
realities of life, and of death, that she had the 
dignity and the self-possession of a woman of the 
world. 

Yet, curiously enough, at a suggestion that we 
go to her room with her to help her get her suit- 
case, her self-possession left her. She did not want 
us, and the more we urged, the more excited be- 
came her refusal. To our inquiries as to how she 
could come to our boarding-home without some 
one to carry her bag, and how she could stay 
anywhere else without money, she burst into 
hysterical sobbing. 

It was plain enough that there was something 
in that room which we must not see, and how 


110 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


could we fail to guess what it was? No girl is 
going to shake with sobs as the self-possessed 
Irene was shaking, unless that mysterious some- 
thing in the room is a lover. 

Now we were in no mood to grudge consolation 
to Irene, in whatever guise that consolation 
might be found. Yet here she was, utterly desti- 
tute and crippled. She could not start out alone 
on slippery sidewalks with the sleet driving in her 
face unless some one helped her. And it was 
equally plain that, whoever her lover might be, 
he was not her husband, nor could he help her, 
or she would not have come to us. It was more 
likely that there were two waifs instead of one, 
both wretched and at their wits’ end, with no 
consolation but each other’s company. Irene’s 
sobs doubtless meant that she dreaded being 
snatched by stern moralists from the only treas- 
ure which she had saved from the shipwreck of 
her fortunes. 

It was finally arranged that Irene should be 
motored to the corner of her street and should gO 
alone to her room to pack her bag, with her one 
arm, or with the help of whatever arms might 
lurk in the room. A discreet reticence was main- 
tained, both by Irene and by us, as to the exist- 
ence of the other pair of arms. 


IRENE AND NICHOLAS IIL 


But at the assurance that no intruder would ac- 
company her to her room, her sobs quieted down, 
and she drove silently with us to the corner of the 
street. After a period of packing which seemed 
the more lengthy considering the very modest 
dimensions of her one little bag, Irene came 
trudging back to the car, her head bowed against 
the sleet, and her empty sleeve flapping wildly 
behind her. 

That she would never have come at all if they 
had had a cent between them, we were morally 
certain. She was proud and she was stubborn. 
Moreover, it was plain that she was in love. If 
her companion had been loyal to a girl with no 
money, no job, and no arm, it seemed more than 
likely that he too was in love. Undoubtedly their 
room rent was unpaid, and they had been asked to 
move on. Hence Irene’s acquiescence. So much 
we could guess without asking questions. We 
felt that after a day or two of quiet, with a hot 
bath and some good meals, Irene would be ready 
to talk without being urged, which, indeed, 
turned out to be the case. 

Nicholas, it seemed, was a truck driver who 
had-lost his job. But feeling certain that the 
trucking business was a good one, he had de- 
cided to go into it on his own account, and he was 


112 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


paying for a truck on the installment plan. He 
had hoped to earn enough by hauling to pay for 
the machine, but business had not been good, and 
despite his best efforts it looked as if he would 
lose the truck, all the money that he had put into 
it and all means for earning anything else. At 
this stage of his fortunes, he and Irene had met 
each other. Both were unhappy, both had been 
undeservedly unlucky, and both were in the mood 
to cling to any one who would be kind. Moreover, 
Irene had a room for which she had paid a month 
in advance. Nicholas had in the meantime been 
sleeping in his truck. But the weather had sud- 
denly turned cold, and even his endurance quailed 
before the prospect of more nights under its chilly 
canvas. Moreover, he had probably got to return 
the truck for lack of money to pay the premiums; 
so, cold or warm, he must seek another shelter, 
and Irene had offered hers as long as it lasted. 

It had lasted one month. And now neither of 
them had a roof, or the price of a cup of coffee and 
a sandwich. ‘The poor fella,’ said Irene, ‘and me 
with only one arm. How can I help him? With 
an arm and a job, I could rent a room, and we’d 
live real well until he got his truck back. There’s 
always lots of hauling in the fall if Nick could 
only get the chance.’ It was plain that there 


IRENE AND NICHOLAS Dos 


would be no settling of Irene’s problems that did 
not include a settling of Nick’s, and we promised 
to start negotiations for his truck and for her new 
arm, and without delay. 

The first interview with the owner of the 
truck was satisfactory, but puzzling. The man in 
charge of the installment service was most sym- 
pathetic, and he agreed to give Nick the time he 
needed to make his payments. 

‘Tt’s hard for a young fella with a family, these 
days,’ said the kindly Irishman. ‘I’ve been 
where I needed a little consideration myself.’ 

So Nick had a family, did he? The question 
remained: Was Irene his family, or did he have 
another one? Since Irene showed no disposition 
to enlighten us, and since it is one of the many 
disadvantages of being poor that one’s private 
affairs must be pried into, there seemed to be no 
alternative but to ask her. This we did as gently 
as possible. Was she, or was she not, married to 
Nicholas? If not, did she intend to be? Did he 
have any other wife who would prevent it? 

Irene was reticent by nature, and her mis- 
fortunes had made her more so. It was not easy 
for her to answer questions, and probably she 
would have refused to do so on her own account. 
But Nicholas stood a much better chance with 


114° OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


us to back him than he did without us, and she 
knew it. For his sake she admitted that she was 
‘sort of’ married to him. At least, neither of 
them was married to any one else, and she was 
his common-law wife. But why not his legal wife _ 
if there had been nothing to prevent it? 

Here it became very hard to explain, for Irene 
was proud and she was sensitive. She was very 
much in love, and she was gifted with a sense of 
the ridiculous. But here it was! When Nicholas 
came to live under Irene’s roof, they decided that 
they must be married at once. So the license was 
procured, and while Irene, who was still rather 
clumsy with her toilette, was arranging her 
slight attempt at wedding finery, Nicholas had 
gone for a look at his truck. In the course of his 
inspection he had sat on a piece of scaffolding, 
and as he jumped off he was horrified by the 
dreadful sound of tearing cloth. A nail had caught 
in the seat of his trousers, and in his impatience 
to return to Irene his upward bound had been 
so quick that the entire seat had been torn off in 
one great three-cornered gash, before he realized 
that he was caught. There it hung, torn past re- 
demption — and the priest waiting for them in 
the church. Fortunately, Irene’s room was near 
by, but, as she said with bitter self-deprecation, 


IRENE AND NICHOLAS 115 


‘What could a one-armed girl do for him? Could 
I darn it?’ Their only recourse was to go to the 
woman who ran the rooming-house and ask her 
to sew him up. She was good-natured, but she 
was busy, and the morning was gone before she 
had found time to sew the edges together. 

Moreover, although the patch enabled him to 
wear the trousers on his truck, how could he get 
married in them? ‘We couldn’t make her hurry 
so that we could get to the priest, for we had to 
tell her that we were already married, or she would 
not have let Nick in my room. We couldn’t tell 
her that it was his only suit, or she would have 
known that we were broke, and been afraid of her 
rent. She might have turned us out, and you 
couldn’t have blamed the poor woman if she had,’ 
added Irene. ‘She needed all the money she could 
get. She had children, and her husband was al- 
ways drunk on raisin-jack. She fixed Nick up as 
well as she could, but she wasn’t much of a tailor; 
and Gosh, how he looked!’ Irene almost smiled 
as she contemplated her memory. Then she 
stopped talking. 

That seemed to be the end of the story so far as 
Irene was concerned, but we ventured another 
faint question. ‘Couldn’t you have got married 
even if Nick did have a queer pair of trousers? 


116 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Wasn’t the wedding more important than the 
looks of the suit?’ 

But here she turned on us. ‘ No, it wasn’t more 
important,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you suppose 
that we wanted to be married decent like any one 
else? What would we have looked like — a bride 
with no arm, and_a groom with nothing but 
patches on his back? How would we look at the 
altar, kneeling there with an empty sleeve where 
my wedding hand ought to be, and rags sewed in 
black thread all over the seat of those gray pants, 
and him with only one short coat that wouldn’t 
hide an inch? Us, looking as we do now — why, 
they laugh at us when they come up behind. 
When they see my sleeve, they stop laughing, but 
does that make it any better?’ 

Irene’s voice was getting higher and higher, 
but we could not stop her. The suppressed agony 
of the past few weeks was finding expression all 
at once, and nothing we could say would help. 
It was better to leave her alone until she had re- 
lieved her heart and could see life reasonably 
again. 

‘Maybe you think that a poor girl like me, who 
has made her mistakes, ain’t got no pride,’ she 
said, ‘but I have. Nick is as good as any man, 
and not every man would marry a girl like me. 


IRENE AND NICHOLAS EZ 


But we wanted to be married decent, and Nick 
felt so about those pants — you know how men 
are, they mind those things worse than women — 
that I wouldn’t make him kneel at the front of 
the church and get laughed at. The poor fella, he 
sat with his head in his hands, and he said, ‘‘ Irene, 
I can’t support you, and I can’t buy you a wed- 
ding ring, and I can’t even marry you without 
looking like a scarecrow. I knew I wasn’t much 
of a man,” he said, ‘‘but I’ve never been before 
where the very dogs barked at me.” That’s what 
he said, and what could I say? 

‘If he was a scarecrow, what was I? Even a 
scarecrow has two arms. And if he was a poor 
man, what can a poor man do with a wife who 
can’t even sew a patch on his pants? I said to 
him, “Nick, you needn’t ever marry me till we 
can do it right. But you can have my roof as long 
as I have one, married or not’? — and he can. I 
don’t care what you say, or the priest says, or any 
one says. Nick’s my man, and if any one blames 
him for anything, I’ll run off and no one will find 
me unless it’s in the morgue.’ 

Needless to say, Irene was in a storm of sobs 
by this time. She had braced herself for a de- 
nunciation of her moral standards, and the longer 
it seemed to delay, the more hysterical she 


118 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


got. ‘Scold me and get it over with,’ she sobbed. 

But Irene never got her scolding. It was 
merely put up to her that if she would like a 
wedding, and if Nick would like a good suit to be 
married in, and if she would like to be taught one- 
armed cookery and other domestic arts, it was all 
hers for the asking.. She was a sensible girl, and 
Nick turned out to be the desirable young man 
we had already made up our minds that he was. 
So they were married by the priest, Nick looking 
very happy in his new suit, and Irene very pretty, 
as she always did. 

They were soon in their two-room flat, where 
Nick, after his day’s trucking was over, helped 
Irene with the supper dishes by playing to her on 
the accordion while she washed them. She is 
getting more expert at her housekeeping every 
day. But, curiously enough, the handicraft at 
which she excels is sewing. She outdoes herself 
in every contrivance for needlework in spite of her 
handicap. Ostensibly she is hemming table linen 
for herself and darning socks. But emotionally, 
every stitch is but a substitute for the stitches she 
was not able to put into Nick’s patch on her wed- 
ding morning. Irene has a vein of obstinacy in 
her, and she has her standards. Those hours of 
suppressed fury over her helplessness bit into her 


IRENE AND NICHOLAS II9 


very soul. Every needle thrust relieves that fury 
and restores her self-respect. 

When the flat is fully furnished and she is less 
awkward with her new arm, she even plans to 
help Nick make his final payments on the truck 
with the money which she earns at dressmaking. 





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VIII 
LOs73 


1.00738 


Standard mental examinations express their re- 
sults in terms of the intelligence quotient, which is 
secured by dividing the actual age into the mental 
age. From 1.10 to .go comprises the quotients 
of those able to do good average mental work. 
From .90 to .80, those who are less gifted, but still 
normal. From .7o down are the grades of dullness 
through feeble-mindedness into imbecility. 

1.Q. .73, therefore, indicates a grade of un- 
developed intelligence, barely escaping feeble- 
mindedness, and from which little rational judg- 
ment can be expected. The possessor of this I.Q. 
compelled to earn an adult living. but with de- 
sires at conflict with his ability, becomes a social 
burden, unless gifted with more than the average 
thrift, perseverance, and willingness to learn — 
which, without careful training, he is hardly 
likely to have. 


Vill 
1.Q. .73 


EXPERIENCE with Matilda has taught us one 
lesson, which is this: If you are a poor young girl, 
not endowed with fortune, with beauty, with 
good conduct, nor with intelligence — do not ask 
for any of these gifts, but for one boon, and that 
alone — a good disposition. Against the reef of a 
good disposition, provided it is good enough, the 
tides of accident and misadventure, of criticism, 
and even of good advice, beat in vain. They hurl 
themselves against it only to fall back helpless in 
a fury of spray and froth. But the good disposi- 
tion dries quickly in the sunshine and remains as 
unmoved and unmovable as before. 

It is certainly no laughing matter to have three 
teaspoons, two diamond rings, one pair of silk 
bloomers, and a new ten-dollar-bill found on the 
person of one to whom they do not rightly belong. 
It is hardly a matter even to smile about, but 
Matilda was smiling in her sweetest and most 
composed manner. She had been asked the usual 
foolish question — ‘Why did you take them?’ — 
and had made the answer that she made to most 


124 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


questions, namely, that she did not know. Why 
does any one want diamonds, silver teaspoons, 
and silk bloomers? Why did the woman who 
owned them want to keep them? And why did 
she become so unbecomingly red in the face when 
deprived of them by Matilda? Presumably they 
both wanted them for the same reason. Matilda 
snatched them. Her employer snatched them 
back. Matilda understood her thoroughly, and 
bore her no grudge for doing what she would 
have done herself if she got the chance. Why 
could not this understanding be mutual? Matil- 
da’s good-nature was imperturbable. And her 
desire for attractive knickknacks which she could 
not afford was unquenchable. The present dif- 
ficulty was that she had an extraordinary number 
of other pretty clothes and ornaments which her 
employer grudgingly admitted had not been 
borrowed from her wardrobe, and yet which, by 
no possible stretching of Matilda’s weekly wages, 
could she have afforded. It was a dismal fact; 
that those in charge of her affairs had been able 
to make a lightning calculation of her property 
to know exactly how much of it she could not 
have paid for, and unhesitatingly they had be- 
lieved the worst. It takes an excellent temper to 
face the charges which had rolled up against 


AO) age: 125 


Matilda, but, fortunately for her, she could not be 
ruffled. To wear a cotton apron with an ink spot 
on it instead of the georgette dress, velvet coat, 
flower hat, rhinestone buckles, satin scarf, French 
gloves, sunburn chiffon hose, cut-work slippers, 
and swagger stick, in which she felt more at home, 
did cause her some concern. But the spots which 
all these irritable and dowdy ladies were casting 
on her reputation elicited only the soothing smile 
which one gives to cranky babies. 

The story that Matilda finally told, after every 
incoherent excuse which her amiable but not 
very nimble wits could fabricate, was that the 
elderly Mr. Stugel, the grandfather of four, the 
retired wholesale grocer, the impeccable owner of 
a neat house and garden which she had overlooked 
from her adjacent kitchen, had taken pity on her 
penniless state, and had given her an outfit of 
clothes and general furnishings. Only what he 
had omitted to give had she stolen from her 
employer. 

‘He saw me crying in my kitchen one night be- 
cause they were having a dance in the front 
room,’ she finally confessed, ‘and I wasn’t in- 
vited. We danced in the kitchen, and he said 
he’d give me some clothes if I’d stop crying — so 
I did.’ 


126 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


‘That old man danced with you in the kitchen? 
Matilda, why will you tell such lies?’ 

Matilda giggled slightly at the recollection. 
‘He did. I’m telling ya. You ask him.’ 
_ And so there was nothing to do but to ask Mr. 
Stugel to call, and answer to the charge of conduct 
so indiscreet in one of his ripe years. Mr. Stugel 
appeared promptly in response to our invitation. 
He had retired from business, had no duties, un- 
limited leisure, and was grateful for any little 
episode that would give him some novel way to 
pass his time. He was a spruce little man, who 
insisted that he was sixty-nine, though it was 
hard to believe. He was dressed in a dapper suit 
with a necktie that matched his socks, and had 
his bald spot in the front concealed by hair care- 
fully brushed from the rear. He entered quickly, 
mopped his face, and looked like a small boy 
caught stealing jam. 

‘She’s right. She’s right. Darned softy. Al 
ways have been. Can’t bear to see them cry.’ 

‘What’s all this about dancing in the kitchen?’ 

Mr. Stugel’s face assumed the same shame- 
facedly amused expression that had been on 
Matilda’s. ‘She’s right. There’s where we 
danced. No other place to do it. Going to the 
garage, heard the dance music. Looked in. Saw 


LO73 127 


them dancing. Heard crying in the kitchen. 
Looked in. Saw Tilly crying. Can’t bear to see 
girls cry. Went in. Said we’d dance too. Could 
hear the music as well as in the front. She said 
she couldn’t enjoy dancing without clothes. 
Said I’d get her some. Damned soft head. Al- 
ways was’; and he mopped his brow again. 

‘But Matilda has so many things — five hun- 
dred dollars’ worth at least. Do you mean to say 
that you gave all that money to her because you 
saw her crying?’ 

‘Yes, I did. Just that soft. But not all at once. 
I’m an anomaly,’ he added, suddenly looking up 
as if that explained everything. ‘I’m going on 
seventy, but I don’t feel it. Can’t keep quiet. 
Like to bum. Play with my grandchildren, but 
they go to bed. My wife sits and sews. Dozes in 
her chair. Children go out. I can’t sit still. Feel 
twenty-one. I’m an anomaly. Got in the habit of 
dropping in the kitchen to see Tilly. She’s the 
same way. Likes to bum. So I said I'd take her 
out. But she hadn’t any clothes. Had to get her 
some. Little rascal bought everything in sight. 
Stopped in front of a jewelry store. Wouldn’t 
budge till I got her that watch. Said she’d stick 
there till she dropped. Both got to laughing. 
Couldn’t stop. Looked like a couple of fools. 


128 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Bought the watch. Same trick with that velvet 
coat. Tried them all on. Made me try one on. 
Laughed till I was sick. Got the coat. Know she 
makes a fool of me — but pay money to buy 
tickets to a good laugh. Might as well laugh at 
Tilly.’ 

After many arguments and a drooping coun- 
tenance, Mr. Stugel agreed to the dangers of 
getting Matilda used to the spending of so much 
more money than she could ever earn. 

‘I don’t want to spend it on her. Damned ex- 
pensive. But the little monkey makes me laugh 
or makes me cry. Can’t stand either. Old softy. 
All right if I don’t see her. All off if I do. Have 
a bite?’ —and suddenly out of his coat-tails 
appeared a large box of fancy bonbons. ‘Take a 
piece. Aw — do. Got to spend my money some- 
how. If I can’t spend it on Tilly, got to spend it 
on you. Only my joke. No offense. Just to show 
there’s no hard feeling.’ 

Surely it was hard on any organization to be up 
against two such hopelessly good dispositions. 
One might argue, one might scold. One might 
threaten, and one might even arrest. The coals of 
fire came back in the shape of smiles and boxes of 
candy. What defense against such weapons? 

It became necessary to make a call upon Ma- 


Ler s7e8 129 


tilda in her next place of employment, which was 
in a house as far as possible from the Stugel 
residence. Down the road was parked a car 
which looked curiously familiar, and, as we turned 
into the drive, the arm of our elderly ‘anomaly’ 
beckoned to us from the shrubbery. He was not . 
in the least disconcerted to see us. On the con- 
trary. he seemed to feel that none but ourselves 
were in a position to appreciate what we were 
about to see. The driveway was torn up and a 
sewer was being laid by a gang of stalwart 
Italian laborers. But they were not at this mo- 
ment laying the sewer. Far from it. To a man, 
they were turned laughing toward the drawing- 
room, whose windows stood open, and from 
which issued, in a nasal but sprightly voice, the 
‘Wabash Blues.’ The melody was very much off 
key, and the accompaniment defies description. 
But the tones were recognizable as the gay voice 
of Matilda — of all people to be singing about 
blues, a malady from which she had never suf- 
fered. When, despite frantic gesticulations from 
Mr. Stugel, we edged around to get the view 
which the sewer gang was getting, we saw Matilda 
in a neat apron seated by the piano which she had 
pushed to the window. There she was singing 
lustily, with the added touch of a silk hat belong- 


130 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


ing to the owner of the house perched jauntily 
over one ear. It would be expecting too much of 
human nature in the persons of pleasure-loving 
Italians to suppose that they would continue to 
dig sewers with Matilda in a silk hat trying to 
amuse them. 

In our ear was the excited voice of Mr. Stugel: 
‘Regular chimpanzee, ain’t she? Ever see the 
beat? Folks gone for the day. Old Johnson’s 
hat. Seen him in it many a time. Takes Tilly to 
see what can be done with a hat. Great idea of 
costume. Real comedian, that girl. Earn a lot of 
money if she had any sense. Not a scrap’ — and 
he tapped his head with a sigh. 

By this time the flutter in her audience had 
made Matilda turn around. She saw the addition 
to her listeners, and she rushed out to greet us. 
Was she disturbed? Not at all. It took more than 
that to disturb Matilda. She asked us all in, in- 
cluding Mr. Stugel. 

‘Dropped around to return your shoes,’ he 
said. ‘Left them at the cobbler’s. Ought to save 
your money. You don’t need new ones. These 
are mended. They’re all right.’ He had her 
mended shoes with him, to be sure, but his excuses 
were rather vague, and he did not dare to linger 
behind with Tilly when we left, although it was 


LOM 131 


nothing less than cruelty to make him come. We 
were so much duller company. ‘Give you a lift 
back. Just to show you bear no grudge,’ he 
insisted. ‘Yes, I did take Tilly to a show — 
damned little monkey. Excuse my French. 
Didn’t she have three girls and their fellows meet 
us afterwards, and didn’t I have to feed the whole 
crowd — oysters, ginger ale, everything? Such 
appetites — starved for a week getting ready for 
that feed, I’ll say. Set me back forty bones. 
But I says to myself — I’ve paid more than that 
for my wife’s parties, dull as ditchwater, stiff as 
a poker. Why grudge it to a bunch o’ kids? 
Laughed my head off. Ought to calm down. 
Too old to laugh so hard. Sure. Come on. No 
hard feeling. Come now. Don’t be hard on the 
old boy.’ 

It was soon after this that Matilda acquired a 
young man. He was, of all moths to fly into the 
flame of Matilda’s expensive tastes, a Scotchman. 
It seems that Matilda on her evening out had 
wandered to a dance-hall, and gazed with yearn- 
ing at the floor to which she had not enough 
money to buy a ticket. However, lack of money 
seldom hampered Matilda, and she sidled sociably 
up to ashy blond young man who was also gazing 
longingly at the dancers, but not because he had 


132, OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


no money. He made a point of having that. He 
had no girl, and Matilda smilingly offered her 
services as partner. But Andy could not dance. 
Matilda would teach him. So, not knowing how 
he got there, Andy was being shoved through 
foxtrot after foxtrot, dime after dime went into 
the ticket box, and, to top all, more dimes were 
spent in getting his dancing teacher home by 
trolley, for he came to enough, steadfastly to 
refuse to be blandished into a taxi. By the 
curious attraction of opposites, Andy continued 
to be fascinated by the girl who could force him to 
spend his money, and Matilda admired pro- 
digiously the solid virtues of the young Scotch- 
man, his dazzling stories of the engines which he 
manipulated, and his general air of respectability, 
so foreign to the social atmosphere in which she 
had been brought up. 

We warned them both. We told Andy of Ma- 
tilda’s insatiable thirst for expensive adornment, 
and that the very chic appearance which he had 
admired in the dance-hall was something he 
would never want to pay for. In vain we pointed 
out to them their differences in religion, their 
ignorance of each other’s ways and traditions, and 
their temperaments, like the poles asunder. Of 
course, Matilda had not the faintest notion of 


O73 a 133 


what we were talking. But, although Andy had, 
he was in love, and that was an end of it. 

Meanwhile, old Mr. Stugel was in a fret over 
the whole affair. He tried to convince us and him- 
self that he was not jealous, but he hated to have 
his nose broken, none the less. 

He besieged us, his only confidantes. ‘Little 
monkey — teases me to give her a new dress. 
You know me. Try to keep out of her way. She 
comes up behind me on the street. Takes me to a 
store window. Money walks out of my pocket. 
Says she wants me to take her and a girl friend to 
a show. Get there — and who is her girl friend? 
That fool Andy. Too tight to buy his own tickets. 
Have to be the third. Tilly sits between us, and, 
by gum, she flirts with both! You think Andy is 
a little tin god on wheels. I see that. But I 
shan’t buy dresses for his wife. She’s set me back 
so much I’m ashamed of it. Let him pay her 
bills. Let her try to squeeze blood from that 
turnip if she can.’ 

Poor Andy tried his best to stem the tide of 
Matilda’s purchases. He argued. We argued. 
Even old Mr. Stugel, in his disgust over Andy, 
whom he considered a great bore, made it very 
plain to Matilda that she had got to liveon Andy’s 
wages. No presents from him to a married 


134 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


woman. Matilda merely smiled on, and by hook 
or crook, which is merely a figure of speech (for 
as far as we know she was not crooked in her 
earnings), she managed to have the latest which 
the shops afforded. Once it was by means of a 
projected trip to New York. ‘Teased me out of a 
ticket — cashed it-in, and started installments on 
a moleskin coat,’ was Mr. Stugel’s excuse. Next 
she developed serious lung trouble, and Mr. 
Stugel, all anxiety, provided her with money for 
treatments which she prudently turned in toward 
her trousseau, coughing only for his benefit when 
she wanted a payment. In vain these devices 
were exposed in her presence, and in the presence 
of the old man. In vain they were explained to 
Andy. Matilda said nothing. What she thought 
was, ‘If he likes to spend his money, let him.’ 
Mr. Stugel’s excuse was, ‘I’m the same old simp. 
Thought she looked so pale, I believed her this 
time. Just left her rouge off to give me a scare. 
She’s been showing me how she learned that 
cough. You’d die laughing at the little devil.’ 
As for Andy, he had schemes for training her, and 
unbounded faith in his ability to handle women. 
The poor moth was too singed to see or listen to 
anything but his flame. What were we against a 
siren? 


LON73 135 


In the meantime Matilda had given up her 
housework, which had become most distasteful to 
her, and had taken up a beauty course at Mr. 
Stugel’s expense. She seemed to be unable to 
learn the finer points of this art, however, and she 
came in one day, in a new spring costume, armed 
with a box of perfumes. This was to be an invest- 
ment with great returns. The scheme, as clearly 
as she could outline it, was to pay an installment 
on the case of perfumes (charged to Mr. Stugel for 
five dollars) and send one half of what she made to 
Chicago. She was sure that she could find the 
address of the firm to which she was to send this 
commission when she looked through her things. 
But it was temporarily lost. 

‘Swellest business deal I ever heard of,’ 
chuckled Mr. Stugel when he was summoned and 
remonstrated with for this new venture. ‘Never 
got more fun out of five dollars. Tilly runs around 
with her little box. Can’t sell a bottle. Uses most 
of it up on herself. If those Chicago guys ever 
get a cent out of Tilly, they deserve a leather 
medal.’ He was irrepressible. The spectacle of 
Matilda and her perfumes tickled him so much 
that our refusal to accept another box of candy 
could not dampen his spirits. ‘Nice candy. 
Sorry you don’t like it. Give it to some kids. 


136 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Half her sales to those guys? For every half a 
cent they get out of Tilly, she’ll get a dollar anda 
half out of them. Sells a bottle and spills three 
on herself. If they get many agents like Tilly, 
they can retire from business pretty soon, and 
it'll be to the poorhouse. Tilly and her little 
box!’ — he threw .back his head and positively 
cackled with mirth. 

Something had to be done with such an invet- 
erate promoter of extravagance and bad habits, 
but what could we do? Matilda and her friends 
were all acting within the law. After her one 
venture into larceny, a mere suggestion that she 
would be obliged to steal again had always 
brought her elderly friend to terms. And he cer- 
tainly had as good a right to throw his money away 
as any one else. We tried pathos. We sketched 
the dire future of Tilly, running Andy into hope- 
less debt, and herself into a situation where the 
frying-pan and the fire would be equally hot. Mr. 
Stugel, always of a sentimental turn, sighed 
heavily. He mopped his brow, and sighed again. 
‘You're right,’ he moaned. ‘ You ladies are always 
right. I always tell Tilly that you're right, but 
I’m a softy and she knows it. If I don’t play 
round with Tilly, what shall I do? I’m too active 
to sit still.’ And he looked up helplessly like a 
child whose toy has been snatched away. 


1.Q. .73 137 


It was too exasperating if Mr. Stugel was to be 
added to our list of children needing recreation, 
and with some petulance in our voice we answered, 
‘Why spoil Tilly? If you’re so active, why not 
practice standing on your head?’ 

‘Don’t need practice,’ retorted he, and, without 
another word, our elderly anomaly darted to the 
middle of the room, placed a book on the floor, 
leaned over, and stood steadily erect upon his 
head, his face getting redder and redder, and the 
nickels and dimes rattling from his upturned 
pockets and rolling under the table. 

We would have let him stay there until he 
dropped, except that we knew that he had meant 
this last trick to finish us, and so ludicrous was 
his appearance that we were afraid that it would 
have the same softening effect on us that Tilly’s 
tricks did on him. 

‘Get up —or down,’ we commanded sternly, 
and he reversed himself at once mopping his face 
with the comment: ‘Often do it for Tilly. Wife 
won’t let me do it for my grandchildren. Afraid 
I'll get apoplexy. Got to die somehow. As good 
away asany. Tilly likes it, soshe can clean up on 
the nickels. Makes me balance a few bills on the 
edge. If they fall out, she gets them. If they 
don’t, gets them anyhow. Ever hear of Stugel’s 


138 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


gun?’ he asked, panting a trifle, but otherwise 
unruffled by his exertion. “Big affair. Worked by 
a spring. Put a man inside. Shoot him into a net. 
Circuses used it at one time. Made a great hit. 
Stugel was my uncle. He invented it. Tried it on 
our farm. Shot me into a haystack many a time. 
Thought of going into the circus myself. Was a 
good tumbler in a small way. Well — Well’ — he 
sighed — ‘those were the days. Getting old, but 
I’d enjoy that gun as much as ever. Yes, yes, 
those were the days,’ he went on dreamily. Then 
he bounced up — ‘Gotta go. Keep Tilly out of 
my sight, or I’ll be the same old fool. Never mind 
the change. Let the woman who cleans up have 
it. Tilly’ll get it if she don’t’ — and he went 
out leaving us in a more hopeless state than 
we had ever been before as regards Matilda’s 
affairs. 

By what turn of the wheel had Fortune brought 
such an aged Harlequin and such a scatter- 
brained Columbine together? And must the be- 
witched Scotchman be ground between them, as 
between the upper and nether millstone? Ap- 
parently that was to be his destiny. We could not 
go on protecting him forever. We argued again 
faint-heartedly with all of them, but as usual they 
had the endurance to wear us down. Moreover, 


L.OLn73 139 


whereas our dispositions began to show some 
signs of wear, and Andy’s stubbornness occasion- 
ally got on edge, Matilda and Mr. Stugel were as 
unassailable as summer clouds. Nothing touched 
them. Nothing could hurt them, and nothing, 
apparently, could stop them. 

We were to leave the city soon afterward for 
our vacation. There was a hot spell, which had 
driven us with all the world into the parks, where 
whole families, with their collars and their shoes 
off, lay under the trees or dabbled in the foun- 
tains. The cold-drink man did a thriving business, 
and a merry-go-round, with its wheezing brass 
piano, was turning gayly in the midst of the green. 
As we sauntered past, our eyes rested on Andy, 
gazing sourly into the whirling throng. We did 
not want to accost him. We, too, were wilted by 
the heat, and we did not feel equal to discussing 
him and his fortunes, with the thermometer at 
89 at 9 p.M. As we turned softly behind him to 
avoid his gaze, we glanced in the direction where 
his eyes were fixed. They were riveted upon a 
wooden camel in the merry-go-round, which had 
been so arranged that, as the riders rotated, it 
took on at the same time an up-and-down, a 
sidewise, and a forward motion, simulating very 
cleverly a ship of the desert well under the influ- 


% 


140 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


ence of liquor. On the camel sat Mr. Stugel, red of 
face, with his straw hat resting on his collar. 
From his open mouth burst spasmodic shouts of 
laughter so loud and gay that every spectator, 
but Andy, was laughing with him. On a neighbor- 
ing hobby-horse of slightly more conservative 
gyrations sat Matilda. Her hair was streaming, 
her cut-work slippers stuck out on either side, and 
her hands waved a greeting to the thrifty Andy 
every time she passed. We took in the situation at 
a glance. Andy had spent all the dimes he cared 
to, and perhaps had taken as many rides at Mr. 
Stugel’s expense as he thought proper. He was 
therefore ready for less expensive entertainment. 
But for Mr. Stugel and Matilda, the evening had 
only just begun, and poor Andy could think of 
nothing better to do than to stand and glare at 
both of them. We tiptoed warily into the throng. 
We were not equal to the crisis. Let them settle 
it themselves. We were glad that vacation was at 
hand, and that we could escape, leaving them to 
whatever midsummer madness might attack 
them next. 

Of course, the madness which attacked them 
was a hasty marriage. What other outcome was 
possible but for Andy to ask his Matilda to share 
his home, and for Matilda to accept his offer with 


EOF 72 I4I 


alacrity? And what other outcome was possible 
for a wife, who could not master the rudiments of 
arithmetic, nor see the connection between 
arithmetic and merchandise even if she had, but 
to invest gayly in luxuries which Andy could not 
possibly afford and which plunged him quickly, 
remorselessly, and hopelessly in debt? And when 
the installment clerk, and the rent collector, and 
the bill-collecting agent all called at once, it was 
natural for a thrifty man to lose his temper and to 
give his wife (in the course of time) a kick as well 
as a scolding. And it was natural for his wife to 
cry, and tell him that he was cross. And when this 
had happened often enough, and Andy found 
himself powerless to explain what Matilda had no 
capacity to understand, it was natural for him to 
abandon the earning of an inadequate living and 
to run away. It was natural for Matilda, thor- 
oughly sick of working for no wages, and of 
listening to tiresome and incomprehensible ex- 
hortations, to try larceny again, and to run away 
in another direction. As for Mr. Stugel, training 
Matilda in extravagance was one thing when she 
was free to play the fool, and quite another when 
she was not. So, after a few applications for a 
loan, one sight of Andy or his wife was enough to 
send the old man scuttling toward any point of 


142 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


the compass where he could feel sure of meeting 
neither of them. 

Of course, all this might have been avoided if 
Matilda could have grasped the arithmetical 
principles of addition and subtraction, or the 
geometrical axiom that the whole is no greater 
than its parts, or even Poor Richard’s maxim 
that ‘Honesty is the best Policy.’ But she could 
not. If she had been blind, she could not see the 
railroad crossing, and if she had been deaf, she 
could not hear the engine whistle. As it was, she 
was merely dull. She could not understand bills, 
budgets, behavior, nor several other things. 

‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds ad- 
mit impediments,’ and so forth. Does that include 
minds with I.Q. .73? 


DULL 


DULL 


‘Moron’ is the term applied to those persons of 
retarded intelligence who are on the border-line of 
feeble-mindedness, never exceeding in adult life a 
mental age of approximately twelve years, and, 
according to the usual definition, incapable from 
mental defect of competing on equal terms with 
their normal fellows, or of managing themselves 
and their affairs with ordinary prudence. 

Accurate figures upon the number of persons so 
handicapped are not available, but it is a conserv- 
ative estimate that one per cent of the entire 
population falls into this class, whereas, among 
delinquents, the estimated morons vary from ten 
to thirty per cent of the total number. According 
to certain penologists, the ten per cent of offend- 
ers who are morons give as much trouble as all 
the rest put together. 


IX 
DULL 

THERE they sat — Milly, Elda, Lulu, and Sadie. 
All of them wanted a job, and all of them had had 
so many that they and we had almost lost count. 

Milly was plain and Polish. She had been em- 
ployed as a houseworker, but never long in one 
place, for she was hot-tempered and sensitive. 
Her appearance was heavy and uncouth, and the 
efforts of her various employers to teach her 
always offended her dignity. Two months’ work 
usually led to a lofty exit from her kitchen and a 
hunt for another job. We suspected that her 
frequent quarrels were merely the result of rock- 
ing in her solitary bedroom after hours until she 
could bear the monotony there no longer. The 
quarrel then resulted merely as an unconscious 
pretext for a change of scene. With this record, 
how conscientiously recommend her for another 
job? And what to do with her if we did not? 

Elda was a very different type. She wore her 
dingy little finery with much poise and self- 
satisfaction, and her rouge and her lip-stick were 
as extreme as she dared to have them in our 


146 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


presence. Elda refused to do housework. She 
had no natural aptitude or training for it and 
utterly refused to acquire any. She insisted upon 
‘clerking’ in a store, and had made the rounds of 
many of them, interspersing waitress work in 
cheap restaurants, where she depended mainly 
upon the tips. She had just passed through a 
regrettable episode in her life which had kept her 
in the hospital for a month. But the baby had 
died, and Elda, who had loved him fiercely for 
three weeks, was recovering from her loss with the 
same buoyancy that had carried her through the 
desertion of her lover. At present she was powder- 
ing her nose with considerable absorption, until 
such time as we could attend to her. 
Lulu preferred factory work and had been em- 
ployed in the knitting-mills, the wire factory, the 
candy shops, the men’s clothing industry, the 
box factory, the leather shops, and I know not 
how many others. In the course of her various 
jobs she had met and married a truck driver and 
lived with him three months. There followed a 
confused tale of family differences to which rela- 
tives on both sides had contributed. Now Lulu 
was left with a baby, while Jim had jumped a 
freight for parts unknown. To find a factory job, 
or indeed any job at all, for a girl with a baby is 


DULL 147 


no easy matter — but Lulu had been laid off of 
one job and had got to have another. It must be 
found somehow. 

The fourth visitor was Sadie, a gentle little girl 
who had been drifting about for years, but could 
give no coherent account of where she had been or 
what she had been doing. She had been sent back 
to her home on the farm from time to time, but 
apparently always wandered back to the city 
when country life began to pall. She could do 
housework pretty well if she were not required to 
do anything on schedule time. She never kept an 
appointment or had a plan. Although she never 
looked very well, no one could locate any definite 
malady. Her father sat by the fire and smoked. 
Her brother stood by the post-office steps and 
stared. Her mother, after a few feeble efforts 
about the house, sat and rocked. Sadie liked to do 
the same. It was merely because she preferred to 
do it in the city that she ran away from the farm. 
No one had had the energy to catch her or to keep 
her when caught. 

If any one five feet two has had to climb a 
mountain with some one who is six feet two, he 
will remember how it feels, not only to lag behind, 
but to know hopelessly and breathlessly that he 
never will catch up. So with our four — and 


148 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


many others like them. They had never kept up 
with the rest of the world, and they never ex- 
pected to. They had no habit of success and no 
conception of it. 

In the course of our conferences with them, 
each of them submitted amiably to a standardized 
mental test. One of the problems of reasoning 
that appears in this test is the following: ‘I know 
a road from my house to the city which is downhill 
all the way to the city and downhill all the way 
back.’ 

When Veronica, a normal little runaway of ten 
years of age, was asked what was foolish about 
that statement, she tittered politely behind her 
handkerchief and said, ‘It is foolish to think he 
could go down both ways.’ This was one of many 
indications that Veronica had the reasoning | 
powers suitable to her age. 

But when Milly, Elda, Lulu, and Sadie were 
asked to point out the same absurdity, the re- 
sponses were quite different. 

Milly said, ‘It is foolish to go downhill’; and 
being pressed for further reasons, she merely 
added, ‘Foolish to go down to a city that is up.’ 

Elda, who had much more society manner and 
desire to please, laughed very heartily at the 
statement and said it was certainly very foolish. 


DULL 149 


‘Why is it foolish?’ asked the examiner. 

‘It sounds so comical,’ laughed Elda. 

‘But why?’ was the persistent inquiry. 

‘Because if it went to the city, naturally it went 
back. It’s foolish to say it twice. It’s the words 
that are so comical.’ And she laughed again, full 
of good-nature and desire to please. 

Lulu went on another line: ‘Did he live by the 
road? It’s foolish to go by the road if he lives in 
the city.’ 

And little Sadie, after some minutes of smiling 
silence, asked gently, ‘Why did he tell her that?’ 
and shook her head at any invitation to say 
more. 

Another absurdity is, ‘The police found the 
body of a girl cut into eighteen pieces; they think 
that she killed herself.’ 

‘What is foolish about that?’ 

Again ten-year-old Veronica relapsed into her 
pocket-handkerchief in giggles. ‘Good-night!’ 
said she. ‘She couldn’t do it.’ 

But poor cross-grained Milly took another view. 
The problem seemed to her a personal affront. 
‘She couldn’t get the chance. Always watching 
you. They’d catch her all right,’ was her reaction 
to the problem, 

Elda hardly thought it polite to laugh at so 


150 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


serious an episode, and, after a good deal of re- 
petition of the question as she fussed with her 
mangy little fur, she remarked that it was foolish 
for girls in trouble to try to kill themselves; it 
didn’t pay. 

Lulu was a skeptic. She announced that for her 
part she didn’t believe that the police did find her! 
If they found her dead, maybe she was dead. 
‘But I just don’t believe it!’ 

Sadie, as always, was reluctant to talk, but she 
finally ventured that ‘sometimes it wasn’t so 
foolish as people think.’ 

A request to point out an absurdity in the 
statement, ‘An engineer said, ‘‘The more cars I 
have on my train, the faster I can go,’’’ elicited 
the following answers: Milly said, ‘That’s right. 
If a certain amount, it pulls faster than with few.’ 
Elda said, ‘One car goes as fast as ten if the 
engine is good.’ Lulu asked, ‘What makes it go?’ 
And Sadie murmured, ‘He can’t have cars if he 
has an engine.’ 

Since two of the girls were twenty-one and the 
other two were almost old enough to vote, it was 
interesting to know what was their idea of the 
difference between a president and a king. It was 
hardly likely that they would have much concep- 
tion of any difference when their reasoning powers 


DUES I51 


were so slight, but we had a certain curiosity to 
know what they would say. 

All of them were ready in their responses and all 
of them showed a robust faith in the superiority 
of presidents. Milly as usual took a gloomy view. 
‘A president builds up, but kings mostly kill you,’ 
was her summing-up of the situation. The more 
kindly Elda gave as her difference that the prest- 
dent gives others a chance, while the king watches 
the soldiers. Lulu agreed that the king was fond 
of war, but thought that the president limited his 
activities to watching the high cost of living —a 
somber picture, indeed, of the view from the 
White House windows. Sadie murmured some- 
thing about a throne, and added that, though the 
king was older, he usually gave more parties. So 
much for the political outlook of the four. 

A still further test of reasoning was the follow- 
ing: ‘Why should we judge a person more by what 
he does than by what he says?’ No particular 
answer was required but any reasonable answer 
was acceptable. Here is Milly: ‘Everybody lies. 
You can only judge by what they say.’ Lulu 
ventured, ‘It’s according to what they say.’ 
And Sadie. ‘You should do what’s right.’ Elda 
gave a light little laugh suitable for an afternoon 
tea and asked coquettishly, ‘Read the mind?’ — 


152 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


an answer of the type that had always made 
people give Elda credit for more judgment than 
she had. It seemed to mean something, and yet, 
like all of her remarks, it just failed to have a 
point. 

Asked to interpret the simple fable of the hare 
and the tortoise, and to tell what lesson might be 
learned from it, Milly kept to solid fact and said, 
‘It teaches about a hare and a tortoise.’ Elda 
wagged her head knowingly and said, ‘Bible 
history.’ Lulu said, ‘It don’t pay to be a fool.’ 
And Sadie, ‘About animals.’ 
| Yet with all this mistiness of comprehension, 
this thick fog through which rational ideas loomed 
so faintly, the girls could not be called entirely 
feeble-minded. They had fair memories and could 
do simple sums in addition and subtraction. They 
could read books and newspapers (although one 
could not but wonder what they made of what 
they read), and they could all use words, Elda 
especially using them with great fluency, although 
the meanings of the words were often peculiar to 
herself. ‘Revenge’ meant ‘you do it,’ and ‘envy,’ 
‘you give in.’ ‘Regard’ meant ‘letter received, 
like au revoir,’ and ‘Mars’ (with a simper), ‘if 
you’re pretty and single, he “‘mahries” you.’ 
‘Civil’ meant ‘you are not. crazy,’ or ‘American,’ 


DULL 153 


though Sadie was sure it was ‘big’ because the 
Civil War was big. 

All the girls could analyze a simple comparison 
of two substances and say why wood and coal were 
alike. ‘You burn ’em,’ was their response. But 
when it came to noting any similarity at all 
between three materials such as wool, cotton, and 
leather, Milly could get no further than that 
cotton was made from scraps of wool, and the 
others shook their heads. 

Lulu could remember some arithmetic, but 
how could she be expected to live within her 
husband’s income when she reckoned in terms of 
time a sum whose answer was thirty-five cents 
and gave two years as her result? 

How can Elda, with her red cheeks and her 
ready if witless responses, fail to attract another 
lover as faithless as her first? In what terms shall 
one preach thrift or chastity to the dim little mind 
of a twenty-year-old girl whose definition of ‘ jus- 
tice’ is ‘peace,’ ‘because I went to a justice of the 
peace’; whose definition of ‘charity’ is first 
‘wagon,’ and who, when informed that it is not the 
same as ‘chariot,’ tried again and says, ‘You’ve 
got control’? In what parables shall one preach to 
Sadie, whose analysis of the lesson to be learned 
from the fable of the milkmaid who counted her 


154 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


chickens before they were hatched was, ‘Learn 
children’? 

Yet Milly and Lulu, Elda and Sadie all are here 
and all must earn their livings until they marry. 
After they marry, they must either get their 
husbands to support them or support themselves. 
They will probably try both methods, and find 
both equally difficult. In the meantime they must 
live, eating as much and dressing in more or less 
the same fashion as the rest of us. They must have 
a room to live in, and they must live with other 
girls so that they will not be lonesome. They 
must have a place to entertain the lovers whom 
they are sure to attract, and something to enter- 
tain them with, and some one to show them how 
to do it suitably. They must be helped patiently 
in the long task of paying their bills. They must 
be encouraged to refrain from quarrels and lies 
and profanity and light-fingeredness and dirty 
stories, and to substitute for these good manners, 
truth-telling, honesty, and an appreciation of wit 
that is not obscene. This is an uphill road for 
girls who did not learn such lessons in their child- 
hood and who are not very quick and adaptable 
at getting new ideas, and it is often uphill work 
for their teachers. 

Many are the places of refuge for a girl who 


DULL Nagle 


is rich and dull, and the girl who is poor but bright 
is finding more open roads every year. But the 
girl who is not gifted either in her mind or in her 
purse, and whose environment has steadily ex- 
ploited all her weaknesses, needs a consideration 
that she has seldom received because she could 
never pay for it. Yet she and her brothers are 
with us in vast numbers. Have they a right to 
live? If so, how can we help them to live safely? 





Xx 
THE TWO MARGARETS 


THE TWO MARGARETS 


Imitation is the instinctive tendency to copy the 
behavior of those whom we consciously or uncon- 
sciously regard as models. It is a persistent and 
universal phenomenon, beginning in infancy; and 
the whole educability of later life, whether for 
good or bad, depends upon this trait. Whenever 
one individual shows superiority of any kind, 
others are restless until they imitate him, and in 
social life one large mass of people is always en- 
gaged in imitating the fashions of those whom it 
admires as leaders, whether or not the fashions 
are desirable for themselves. 


x 
THE TWO MARGARETS 


THERE was excitement throughout the women’s 
dormitory that evening. In the upper rooms 
where the students lived and in the maid’s kitchen 
in the basement, the air was vibrant with antici- » 
pation and festivity. For once the students and 
the maids agreed upon the desirability of an early 
dinner eaten with dispatch, and with no dawdling 
over the dessert. In fact none of the girls who 
were going to the Prom stayed to eat the dessert. 
Only the wallflowers, whose blooming was re- 
stricted to the dormitory and the classrooms, re- 
mained in the dining-hall to dispose of their pie, 
which was carelessly shoved to them by the 
middle-aged cook through the pantry window. 
Although many of the girl students were going to 
the Prom, and a number of the girl waitresses 
were going to the Benefit Dance at Mechanics’ 
Hall, interest was centered in each group about 
one person — Margie Crane, a junior, who with 
Jack Randall was to lead off in the grand march 
at the Prom, and Greta Klamm, the pantry girl, 
who had been chosen with Jim Riksla to lead in 
the exhibition dancing at the Benefit. 


160 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Both girls were beautiful dancers, and the idols 
of their respective sets. In fact they bore a curious 
resemblance to each other in their persons and 
their temperaments. Margie was a vigorous 
blooming girl, with yellow bobbed hair, and 
muscles developed by the tennis and swimming at 
her father’s country place. She was well-formed 
and lithe, used to admiration and to doing as she 
pleased. She accepted her position as college 
queen with the careless assurance of long habit. 
She took as her natural right the crowds of boys 
clamoring around her dance card, the softened 
looks of the young instructors who could not 
flunk her, and the adoration of the freshman 
girls who sent her anonymous flowers, and then 
gazed at them so fixedly when she wore them 
that she could hardly fail to guess their origin. 
Such was Margie, the social leader of the college. 

And Greta by a different route had arrived 
among her friends at somewhat the same enviable 
height. She, too, was vigorous and well-formed, 
with yellow hair, and the freedom of movement 
she had gained in her father’s hayfield and truck 
garden, before she had sought her fortune in the 
city. If the young instructors melted at Margie’s 
glance, so did the vegetable man, the janitor, the 
postman, and the gardener at Greta’s smile, 


THE TWO MARGARETS 161 


when she was in friendly mood. She made no more 
effort to gain this popularity than did Margie. 
She knew that the handsome iceman who swung 
the huge slabs of ice so easily to his shoulders 
for the dormitory refrigerators was as famous for 
his dancing as for his other exploits at the Czech 
Athletic Club. He and she would make a striking 
couple for the Benefit exhibition. One glance 
would secure him for her partner — which it did. 
It was the same variety of glance which had 
cnabled Margie to capture the most prominent 
man in college as her escort for the evening. 
Both girls were somewhat spare of words, but 
wonderfully skillful in their glances and in the 
utter sclf-confidence and imperiousness which 
these glances expressed. They were not in the 
least given to analytic introspection, but they 
recognized this kindred quality in each other and 
acknowledged each other as peers. Each felt in a 
subconscious kind of way that she understood the 
role played by the other girl, and that, had Fate 
reversed their destinies, each could be understudy 
for the other without an effort. Margie had a 
stubborn way of giving her old evening dresses to 
Greta instead of to worthy under-class girls who 
needed them more than Greta did. 

Only the week before, Greta had been washing 


‘162 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


the windows in Margie’s room, while Margie, 
having spurned every eager freshman offer of 
assistance, was trying to marcel her own hair. 
Margie waved, and Greta polished in silence for 
some time, then Margie remarked: 

‘Hear you've got a dance on, Greta.’ 

Affirmative grunt from Greta. 

‘Got that blue dress yet, or need another?’ 
went on Margie, squinting at her profile. 

Greta shrugged her shoulders — ‘Got to get 
another. The rain finished it last night.’ 

‘Rain?’ asked Margie, surprised; ‘I thought 
that fellow had a Dodge — the grocer with the 
gold teeth, I mean.’ 

‘Yes — that’s the one,’ answered Greta. ‘He 
has — but I walked home.’ 

Margie turned and looked at her with a slight 
laugh — ‘Smart Aleck, eh? He must have been 
pretty fresh if you walked home in that rain.’ 

‘He was,’ assented Greta laconically. 

‘How did you get in that late?’ went on 
Margie. 

‘Annie,’ answered Greta, and continued her 
polishing. 

Margie lounged over to her closet and began an 
absorbed overhauling of its contents. After some 
ten minutes’ study of her wardrobe, during which 


q. 


THE TWO MARGARETS 163 


Greta finished the windows and began to dust the 
floor, Margie advanced with a green chiffon over 
her arm — ‘Would that do, Greta?’ she asked. 
‘It’s not like new, but I’d wear it myself if I didn’t 
have a new one.’ 

Would it do! Even a season’s wear of Margie’s 
dresses left them far more desirable than any- 
thing Greta could buy on the installment plan, 
which was necessarily her only method of buying 
anything. She held it up against her before the 
mirror, and the yellow hair which had set it off on 
its first wearer did so equally well on its second. 
Any freshman girl receiving such a gift from 
Margie would have smothered her in rapturous 
gratitude. Greta merely threw it over her arm, 
picked up her pail and said, ‘Thanks.’ 

Margie resumed her marcel iron. Then, as 
Greta neared the door, she called — ‘Say, Greta.’ 

Greta paused in the doorway. 

‘You’d better watch out with those fellows, 
you know,’ she commented. ‘Sometimes they get 
rough.’ 

Greta nodded. ‘You’ve said it,’ she agreed, and 
shut the door behind her. 

Now that the evening for the parties had 
arrived and dinner was disposed of, the upper 
floors of the dormitory were in an orgy of hair- 


164 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


curling, last-minute dress alterations, flowers 
arriving in long boxes, and excited scurries from 
one room to another. As the hour wore on, and the 
girls emerged one by one as finished products into 
the corridor, they congregated in Margie’s room, 
to have a final inspection of each other, and a 
delicious last-minute discussion of the gayety 
ahead of them. Here the most dazzling crowd of 
curled, perfumed, and rouged young belles were 
certain to be collected, and the gossip to be most 
spicy and authentic. The chatter waged violently, 
and clustered as usual about Margie, the most 
popular girl in the room, although true to form 
Margie said nothing herself, but devoted herself 
with absorbed and wrinkled brow to the study 
of her person in the looking-glass. From every 
possible angle the young Diana in silver cloth and 
brilliants scrutinized her slim young shape in the 
mirror, and then, suddenly catching a glimpse of 
Greta descending from the maids’ attic in her 
second-hand green chiffon, she called out — “Hey 
there, Greta, that belt’s not on right. Let me fix 
ites 

Greta entered the room without a trace of em- 
barrassment and surveyed her belt in the glass. 
‘T thought it was wrong,’ she said, ‘but the girls 
upstairs couldn’t fix it.’ 


THE TWO MARGARETS 165 


‘I can,’ said Margie, and she bent frowning over 
Greta’s costume with the same absorption that 
she had over her own. She was curiously deter- 
mined that Greta should be the belle of her ball, 
as she intended to be of her own. Margie had 
watched Jim at his ice-wagon duties that morning 
from her window, had watched and admired his 
graceful vigor as any observer must. She felt the 
age-old craving of royalty to mingle incognito 
with the merry-makers of another social group. 
But since this was impossible, she dimly felt that 
Greta and Jim were to be the shadows, the 
doubles, of Jack and herself at the Benefit that 
night, and that Greta must do credit to her réle. 

They were a picture — these two yellow-haired 
dryads of different social backgrounds. Margie, 
with a refinement of feature, hand, and ankle 
which Greta could not boast; but Greta in her 
turn possessing a wild opulence of bloom and a 
primitive vigor which even tennis and swimming 
could not quite give her more cultivated sister. 
Greta gazed at herself in the glass, Margie snipped 
away at the belt, and the talk continued about 
them. Petting — it seemed — was the absorbing 
topic of the hour. Was it or was it not defensible? 
That was what the younger girls wanted to know. 
There was certain to be a considerable amount of 


166 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


it before the evening was over — on that point 
all were agreed. But the opinion of the popular 
upper-class girls was solicited by the freshmen 
on the finer points of the subject. How much 
should one pet? Was it more sporting to do it with 
all? Or more refined to pet with but one? Did 
that mean, one at a.time? Or one for all time? 
Or was there safety in numbers? Was one kiss — 
say — at parting, really petting? Or did it mean 
more than that? Did open petting in the corners 
of the dance-hall show a better spirit because not 
hidden? Or did it, on the contrary, look vulgar, 
and was the place for affectionate demonstration 
in the dark on the way home? In reality was 
petting any sign of affection at all? Or was it 
merely a gesture, a sign of freedom from restraint, 
and to be thoroughly understood as such on both 
sides? Occasionally, as the talk surged about 
them, Margie and Greta caught each other’s eye, 
and an electric glance as of experts among ama- 
teurs flashed between them. Obviously Greta 
could not have joined in the discussions of an 
alien group, even had she chosen, and Margie did 
not choose to speak. Both girls listened with a 
restraint more oppressive than speech — never- 
theless, they listened. 

‘Well, I certainly should not advise a freshman 


THE TWO MARGARETS 167 


not to pet,’ announced a popular junior decisively. 
‘It’s the only way to be sure of dates. Pet, but 
keep your head, is the way I look at it; that is, if 

you don’t want to be a wallflower.’ | 

Half a dozen adoring freshmen, who hoped 
sincerely to avoid being wallflowers, listened with 
attention. | 

‘There’s Suzanne. She has lots of dates. Do 
you think she pets?’ asked one of them timidly. 
Suzanne was a freshman girl who was getting 
much upper-class attention from the boys. 

One of the juniors shouted with laughter — 
‘Pet? Does Suzanne pet? If you had been at the 
football dance, I guess you would have thought 
she did.’ 

‘I heard she was terrible,’ volunteered another. 

‘She overdoes it,’ said the junior; ‘she’ll get 
her pace with a little more experience.’ 

‘I know some girls who have dates, and I’m 
sure they don’t ever pet at all,’ continued the 
freshman. 

“No one said you couldn’t have dates with 
somebody, some of the time, without petting,’ 
answered the junior judiciously. ‘The point is you 
can’t be sure of them all the time with the men 
you want. And who wants to sit around speculat- 
ing on her chances of a date toa dance, or on hav- 


168 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


ing to go with a prune? I don’t, for one. I want 
to be able to plan ahead, and be sure of my 
engagements. I have to, to get my clothes in 
shape. Those girls who don’t pet — even the 
best of them — get left in the lurch half the time. 
They never know where they stand, unless they 
have a steady, and they have to pet to keep ham.’ 

The theme continued to develop vigorously 
among the guests until one of the bolder juniors 
remarked — ‘For goodness’ sake, Marge, don’t 
be so cagey. Can’t you give us some line on all 
this?’ 

‘I’m busy,’ answered Margie, her mouth full of 
pins. 

‘My mother says it’s a dangerous game,’ con- 
tinued the prudent freshman. 

‘Your mother says that, does she?’ laughed the 
junior, pinching her check. 

‘Not so far wrong,’ commented Margie, and 
Greta stiffened perceptibly under her fingers. 

‘Do you really think so?’ asked the chorus, in a 
flutter now that the oracle had spoken. 

‘Of course it is,’ continued Margie; ‘everything 
is dangerous that’s any fun — racing, diving off a 
canoe, surf-board riding, skiing — anything.’ 

‘Too dangerous?’ shuddered a romantic adorer, 
in a thrilling whisper. 


‘THE TWO MARGARETS 169 


‘Any good game is dangerous unless you know 
the rules and can handle it. If you can’t, you’d 
better let it alone,’ answered Margie with a slight 
sneer, and an extra jab at Greta’s belt. 

‘Don’t you think that college students ought 
to keep up higher standards than other girls and 
let petting alone?’ asked a thoughtful girl whose 
escort had failed her, and who was therefore miss- 
ing the party. 

Margie shrugged her shoulders — ‘You're 
young but once, and a long time dead — it’s up 
to you to get the most out of life, — There,’ she 
added, shoving Greta away and looking her over, 
‘that belt is right for once — doesn’t Greta look 
nice, girls?’ 

The girls murmured polite assent. They were 
not in the least interested in Greta, and thought 
the green chiffon much too good for her. Greta 
stole a shy admiring look at Margie — ‘Thanks,’ 
she said and disappeared into the corridor. 

At this point the sound of the bell below in- 
dicated that the first escort had arrived, and that 
soon they would be coming thick and fast. With 
excited squeals the girls ran to their rooms to 
await their summons. The hall below was soon 
crowded with sleek and shining young men in 
dress-suits, and the drive filled with honking 


170 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


horns and grinding brakes. Just as Margie and 
Jack Randall strolled down the drive to get into 
his car, they met Greta and Jim headed for the 
car he had rented for the evening. Jim was not 
an iceman for nothing. His shoulders were as 
broad and his step as springy as the best of the 
college athletes. As the two couples passed each 
other, they smiled involuntarily. All of them were 
in the same mood. The young men were like two 
spirited Indian braves just returned from a 
successful hunt, and the girls were like squaw 
princesses as full of life as themselves and as eager 
to join in the dance of celebration. The eyes of all 
four were reckless. The tom-toms had been beat- 
ing in their brains for hours and were to beat for 
hours more. Physically all four of them were 
superb, and they knew it — their glance at each 
other admitted the fact about each other, and 
about themselves. In a moment they had passed, 
climbed into their respective cars, and driven 
away. 

Quiet settled upon the dormitory for several 
hours. Scattered groups of uninvited girls chatted 
in a desultory fashion, parted, and went to bed. 
Annie and the other older maids trudged up the 
attic stairs, and soon even their creakings ceased. 
The lights were low in the halls. The tides of life 


THE TWO MARGARETS 171 


were elsewhere. Not until long after midnight 
did the first stragglers begin to return. They came 
in groups joking and whispering, and then in 
an uproarious crowd. There was much laughing 
from the darkened piazza, and much scurrying on 
the gravel. But even this died down after a time. 
The corridors were filled with the chattering girls, 
whom the proctors patiently quieted down and 
saw one by one into their rooms. They checked 
them off. Every one seemed to be in but Margie. 
Two of the proctors whispered together in the 
hall, and, with that second-sight peculiar to their 
kind, two little freshman girls listened to them 
through their partly opened door, and whispered 
excitedly to each other —‘She’s not in. They 
don’t know where she is.’ 

As they peered through the crack at the worried 
proctors, a girl in evening dress from another 
dormitory tore up the stairs and clutched them 
by the arm. 

‘Come, quick,’ she whispered wildly. ‘You’ve 
got to come! It’s Margie.’ 

She dragged the bewildered girls down the 
stairs and into the night, now at its blackest. Two 
little shapes wrapped in raincoats scampered 
after them at a discreet distance. Down the drive 
they hurried to a clump of trees where a car was 


172 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


standing. A man and a woman seemed to be in 
the front seat. As the girls approached, they 
could hear first a man’s fierce undertone and then 
a girl’s hysterically muffled whisper. Both of 
them appeared to be struggling to get hold of the 
steering-wheel. There was a rapid interchange of 
‘Let go, I tell you!’ and, ‘Look out, some one 
will hear you!’ followed by a rustle approaching 
a scrimmage, and then some profanity in the 
man’s voice hissed between hushed screams. 

The girls stood petrified with fright. They 
could hardly move. Then the more self-possessed 
of the older girls urged them on. ‘Some one is 
trying to rob her — He'll kill her if we don’t go.’ 
They dashed around the corner of the car just in 
time to see Randall with a final wrench thrust 
Margie back in the seat and grasp the steering- 
wheel. With a quick lurch the car started down 
the drive. It was but a moment, but they could 
see that it was not the Randall whom they knew. 
His face was flushed, his hair awry, and he ap- 
peared thoroughly beside himself with anger, 
drink, or some combination of emotions less easily 
classified. So accustomed were the girls to 
Margie’s social domination, to her reticence, and 
her ability to take care of herself, that their voices 
froze in their throats. They did not dare cry for 


THE TWO MARGARETS 173 


help and have the whole college about their heels. 
She would never forgive them, that they knew 
very well. As Margie had said a few hours before 
—‘ Don’t play the game unless you know it’; and 
they admitted they knew nothing about it, were 
utterly beyond their depths, with no judgment to 
meet an event without parallel in their experience. 
They stood helplessly looking after the retreating 
car — when from some bushes farther down the 
drive a group of boys suddenly made their ap- 
pearance and darted after it. By the glare from 
the headlights the girls could see Jack’s roommate 
jump to the running-board and another form leap 
into the back seat. The car suddenly stopped 
amid confused shouts and the noise of breaking 
glass. The girls instinctively drew back among 
the trees as a slender form in an evening cloak 
hurried out of the car and ran past them into the 
dormitory. They could hear behind them that a 
fist-fight was in progress which ended in a peculiar 
hoarse cry, more like an animal than a human 
being. Then the headlights went out and there 
was utter silence. The proctors stole back into 
the dormitory, but the freshman girls stood for 
one moment clutching each other with delight 
before they followed them. Here was life! Here 
was adventure! Here were thrills! This was a 


174 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


college education! They fairly hopped up and 
down in ecstasy and hugged each other in the joy 
of the moment. Then prudence prevailed, and 
huddled in their raincoats they stole into the 
dormitory a few moments before it was locked for 
the night. 

Fifteen minutes later, another car started up 
the drive. It also stopped, and there was another 
excited argument, which ended with a man’s 
decisive thrusting of a girl into her seat, and a 
recapture of the wheel. But this time no audience 
was interested in her fate. There were no proc- 
tors watching in alarm, and no boys darted from 
the clump of trees to stop the car. It wheeled 
suddenly and disappeared from the driveway into 
the night. 


The Prom had been on a week-end and there 
were no classes until Monday. Some of the revel- 
ers did not get up at all until the next afternoon, 
meals were irregular, and many students went out 
of town. Margie did not emerge until evening, 
and when she did Fortune was again kind to the 
two little freshmen. With their own eyes they 
saw Margie descend the stairs, they saw Jack 
Randall meet her in the hallway — once more his 
old correct self. They saw him speak to her in a 


THE TWO MARGARETS 175 


reserved way and press a note into her hand, and 
they saw her run upstairs and into her room to 
read it. ‘He is apologizing; he is telling her he will 
never touch another drop,’ they thrilled into each 
other’s ears, as they went in to dinner. 

Margie belonged at their table, and she strolled 
in when the meal was half over. She, too, was her 
old composed self. The talk was, of course, wholly 
on the Prom — but in the midst of it Margie 
suddenly glanced toward the pantry and said — 
“Where’s Greta?’ 

No one had been thinking of Greta, and no one 
knew or cared where she was. 

‘Oh, she’s around somewhere, I suppose,’ said 
one of them carelessly. 

‘No, she isn’t,’ said the matron who sat at the 
table — ‘she didn’t come in last night, and I told 
her she would have to go.’ 

‘She didn’t come in?’ said Margie, staring. 

‘Not until this morning,’ said the matron. 
‘She said she had stayed with a girl friend, and 
probably she did, but I can’t put up with any 
more from Greta—I have got to know where 
the help are.’ 

‘Where will she go?’ persisted Margie. 

The matron shrugged her shoulders — ‘Oh, 
she’ll get another place — she’s good help, but 


176 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


too wild for us to bother with,’ she answered 
easily. 


Two years later all was festivity at the Crane 
home. Margie and Jack Randall were to be mar- 
ried, and the house was full of wedding presents, 
guests and caterers. A call had been sent to the 
employment agency for a supply of expert women 
to help the wedding party with the final arrange- 
ments, and several of the maids had just arrived 
and were making themselves useful in the guest- 
rooms. Margie, after the most expensive milliner 
in the city had failed to arrange her veil to suit 
her, had driven her petulantly out of the room. 
‘There — you go and fix up mother. I know just 
how I want this veil and I am going to arrange it 
myself. I know what I want better than you do’; 
with which the discomfited modiste had been 
obliged to retire, and Margie, with the expertness 
of years of study of her own person, was adorning 
herself in her own way. 

As she sat before her dressing-table shifting the 
folds of her bridal veil, one of the maids from the 
employment agency stepped into the room witha 
package in her hand — ‘Excuse me, Miss Crane,’ 
she said, ‘but Mr. Randall said it was very 
special’; and she laid the package on the dressing- 
table. 


THE TWO MARGARETS 177 


Margie picked it up eagerly. ‘It’s Jack’s wed- 
ding present,’ she said, and then, catching a 
glimpse of herself in the glass, she stared at her 
reflection in it and at that of the face beside it. 
‘Greta!’ she gasped, dropping the package. 

‘Yes, Miss Margie,’ said Greta, her pale face 
staring back into the mirror at Margie’s reflec- 
tion and at her own beside it. 

The two faces no longer resembled each other: 
Margie was rosy, her lips were parted, and her 
eyes were shining with excitement. Greta’s face 
was thin and drawn over her cheek-bones, her 
skin was waxy, and her eyes were dead. She was 
a wan, scarcely recognizable double of the once 
blooming Greta. 

Margie turned from the mirror and looked her 
in the face — ‘What’s the matter, Greta? Are 
you sick?’ 

Greta nodded slightly. 

‘What is it?’ asked Margie. ° 

‘Lungs, I guess—JI don’t know,’ answered 
Greta indifferently, shrugging her shoulders. 

‘I never knew where you went when you left 
the dormitory. I asked, but no one knew,’ went 
on Margie. ‘Where were you?’ 

Greta’s face went utterly impassive — then 
she flushed suddenly and her eyes filled with 


178) OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


tears. She turned her head away to hide them. 

Margie jumped up from her chair and seized 
her by the shoulders. ‘You’ve been in trouble, 
haven’t you, Greta?’ she whispered; ‘that’s why 
you're sick. Is there anything I can do? Can’t I 
do anything?’ she repeated insistently, and she 
shook the girl slightly in her impatience as Greta 
remained silent. 

‘Not now, you can’t,’ said Greta, slowly turning 
and looking her in the eyes. 

Margie stared at her, puzzled — and then a 
little shyly, as not wanting to be too obviously 
bridal, ‘Did you marry that Jim of yours?’ she 
asked. 

Greta shook her head and pressed her lips to- 
gether in a hard line. 

‘That’s all off, then? Well — you always had 
plenty to choose from, you needn’t worry,’ added 
Margie, more lightly — but as two tears slowly 
rolled down Greta’s grim face, her tone changed. 
“He isn’t dead, is he, Greta?’ she asked sym- 
pathetically. ‘What’s the matter? Where is he?’ 

Greta’s voice was stony, ‘I don’t know where 
he is now. He was in the Pen,’ she answered. 

Margie gasped. ‘In the Pen?’ she reiterated. 
There was a blank pause. ‘I didn’t know he was 
that sort. It’s lucky you didn’t marry a man like 


THE TWO MARGARETS 179 


that, after all,’ she said in a relieved tone to break 
the interval. 

But Greta turned on her: ‘He was no worse 
than I was. He was no worse than — than any 
fellow, than your fellow was. He just didn’t have 
any friends to stop him that night — and I was 
like you said—JI couldn’t play the game. I 
thought I could.’ She stopped suddenly as if she 
had said too much. But it was evident that her 
whole self was aroused to defend her faithless 
lover from the charge of being different from other 
men, who under happier circumstances had been 
more loyal. 

Margie stared at her, stupefied, and then a 
glimmer of recollection coming over her she 
blushed a deep crimson, and shrunk away from 
Greta. ‘That night of the Prom — were you 
there? Did you see us?’ she whispered. 

‘Sure we did, we were parked down the road a 
way,’ answered Greta, as if she had been harboring 
a grudge for two years and was anxious to be rid 
of it. ‘Jim was no worse than your man was, but 
he had no friends to stop his foolishness like you 
did. He says it was all my fault. Maybe it was: 
I don’t know. We were no different from the rest 
of you, but it turned out different,’ she ended 
in a lifeless voice. 


180 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Now it was Margie’s turn to be on the defensive 
for her lover. ‘Jim must have been worse than 
Jack. No one goes to prison for what Jack did. 
He just lost his head, that was all. He was sorry 
for it afterward.’ 

‘So was Jim,’ answered Greta dryly. ‘He’s had 
reason to be sorry, God knows, and so have I.’ 

‘But there was more to it with you two than 
with us, you know there was, Greta — you've no 
right to say there wasn’t,’ argued Margie re- 
proachfully. She felt that she could not bear it if 
Greta had suffered and she had gone scot free for 
the same indiscretion. 

‘Yes, there was more to it before we got through, 
lots more,’ assented Greta gently. ‘But there 
wouldn’t have been. We were never with a tough 
crowd before. Jim was a good fellow before that 
night.’ Then, as she turned away toward the 
door, she added as if to herself, ‘But he’s no good 
any more. Neither of us is.’ 

There was a sudden clatter of wedding guests 
in the hall, and a chorus from outside of ‘Where’s 
Margie? We want the bride,’ accompanied by a 
loud knock. 

‘In a minute,’ called Margie through the door, 
and she placed her back against it facing Greta. 
The old dormitory feeling had just swept over 


THE TWO MARGARETS 181 


her, that she and Greta were the same girl mas- 
querading in different costumes, that each was as 
the other would have been could the princess and 
the pauper have changed their rdles. The only 
difference was that now she seemed in an unde- 
finable way to be the pauper and Greta the prin- 
cess unlawfully kept from her rights. 

‘Can you use any of my clothes, Greta?’ she 
asked, almost imploringly. ‘You used to look 
lovely in my things.’ 

Greta shook her head. ‘I don’t go out much,’ 
she said, and then, with a reckless toss of her 
head — ‘I’m only on parole myself,’ she added 
doggedly. ‘You don’t have many nights out when 
you are on parole.’ 

‘Parole from where?’ asked Margie in a stifled 
voice. 

Greta, still flushed, gazed steadily at her as if 
she were the innocent and the bride were the con- 
demned. 

“I told you I was as bad as Jim was,’ she ex- 
plained simply as if to a child who would not 
understand. ‘If you college people slip a little, 
your friends pull you back. Me and Jim, we just. 
slipped the rest of the way.’ Thenshe added witha 
kind of grim humor — ‘I guess I wore your ideas 
like I did your clothes, and I couldn’t afford either 


182 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS , 


of them. Some one has to pay, and girls like me 
ain’t got the price.’ 

She turned to go, but Margie clutched her by 
the shoulder and held her. ‘You think it is our 
fault, don’t you, Greta? If we had been different, 
then you would have been?’ She felt that she 
must at least take the blame for Greta’s mis- 
chance, since she had escaped her punishment. 

‘T don’t know whose fault it is — it just hap- 
pened. That’s all I know,’ returned Greta life- 
lessly, as if she had long passed the stage of excus- 
ing herself or of condemning others. 

‘Let us in, Margie; we want to see the bride,’ 
came in an insistent chorus from the hall, ac- 
companied by loud knocks. Then one voice 
alone, a young man’s voice — ‘Won't you even 
let me in, Margie?’ 

Margie’s face softened. She turned toward the 
door, and then to Greta, who stood stiffly with 
paling cheeks listening to the voice of the bride- 
groom, so like the one whom she had lost. Sud- 
denly Margie threw her arms around the girl’s 
neck. ‘It’s not fair. You and Jim ought to be 
where we are,’ she whispered, almost sobbing. 
She clung to Greta’s rigid, unyielding form for a 
moment, and then, recovering her self-possession, 
she turned to the door and opened it. The crowd 


THE TWO MARGARETS 183 


of wedding guests, with the handsome young 
bridegroom in the rear, burst into the room with 
laughter and questions. 

‘What are you up to, all alone, Margie? Not 
changing your mind, are you? What’s the matter 
with your veil? It’s all mussed up. You look 
nervous,’ they shouted laughing — and through 
their midst the black-uniformed maid from the 
employment agency slipped unnoticed and dis- 
appeared into the hall. 





XI 
PETTING AND THE CAMPUS 


PETTING AND THE CAMPUS 


It is generally agreed that the three major 1n- 
stincts are those of Sex; Parental Love; and Self- 
Preservation, or Egotism. Without the continu- 
ous operation of the powerful sex instinct, the 
race would not have survived. But it is equally 
true, that healthy family and social life requires 
some regulation of the sex impulse and a utiliza- 
tion of surplus sex energy for other purposes than 
its direct instinctive satisfaction. The manner in 
which sex energy is conserved and utilized for in- 
direct as well as direct creative purposes is a fair 
index of the cultural development of an individ- 
ual or of a group. 


XI 
PETTING AND THE CAMPUS 


IT is as far from my purpose here to point with 
pride to the good old days before the War, when 
all of us were models of decorum, as it is to view 
with alarm the present period when decorum is 
no longer a model. Itis merely an attempt toana- 
lyze a mode of behavior prevailing among many 
young people to-day —a behavior which may 
be old in its essence, but which has a new name 
and a new point of view characteristic of the 
times. 

For several years I have been interested in an 
organization devoted largely to the protection of 
young girls, whose rash ‘petting’ (among other 
things) often leads to such pitiable results. One 
day a young girl entered our office and looked 
around cautiously as she closed the door behind 
her. She announced herself as a recent graduate 
from a large Eastern college, and asked whether 
she, as well as the untrained working-girl, had 
a right to consult us for vocational placement. 
When she was alone with me, I asked her in what 
she was interested, and again she looked around 


188 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


with caution. Then in a stage whisper she said: 

‘I want you to tell me what to train myself for, 
but I warn you, I shan’t want to doit. I want to 
do just one thing.’ 

‘Then why not do it?’ was my natural question. 

‘Because I can’t. I would if I could.’ 

‘What is it, and why can’t you do it?’ 

She leaned forward. ‘I want to get married. 
That’s all I want to do, and I can’t do it because I 
haven’t any one to marry.’ 

Any one who has talked to girls on vocational 
guidance is familiar with the glassy look which 
comes over their eyes, which says as plainly as 
words, ‘We will train just long enough to earn 
our living till we get married, and not a moment 
more.’ But here was a girl who said flatly, 
without subterfuge, that she could feel no inter- 
est in a training she hoped never to use. 

‘What’s the trouble?’ I asked. ‘If you want a 
husband so much, what seems to be the difficulty 
about getting one?’ 

‘Because I don’t know how to pet,’ she said. 
‘Just once, coming home from a party with a fel- 
low I didn’t know very well, we petted on the 
back seat of the car. I sat in his lap all the way 
home. I never had such a good time in my life. 
But the next day he didn’t call, and I never saw 


PETTING AND THE CAMPUS 189 


him again, so I suppose I didn’t do it right — too 
much or too little — or something!’ 

‘Perhaps you overdid it,’ I ventured. ‘It 
doesn’t sound to me as if you were too backward.’ 

‘I think so myself,’ she admitted frankly. ‘I 
think I scared him off, and since then I haven’t 
had another chance. They tell me I ought to 
sublimate my feelings, and my teachers suggested 
that I should try to be a matron of an orphan 
asylum — sublimate on the children. Do you 
think I could?’ 

‘If any one ever got a husband out of an orphan 
asylum, I never heard of it,’ I answered. ‘Why 
not consult the census, pick out a State where the 
men outnumber the women, get any work you 
can find in that State, and hope for the best?’ 

‘I believe I will try,’ she answered with some 
enthusiasm, as she left. Several letters have come 
from her which indicate a happier state of mind, 
although as yet no wedding announcements have 
celebrated her success. 


The story of this interview has been given with 
some detail, because it illustrates a frankness in 
admitting the state of one’s feelings which would 
have been difficult if not impossible to a former 
generation. When many of us were in college, 


190 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


whereas our subconscious may have been in the 
same yearning state as that expressed by this 
young woman, at least it was Sub — whereas 
now one might almost say that it is Super. Last 
summer I was at a student conference of young 
women comprised of about eight hundred college 
girls from the Middle Western States. The sub- 
ject of petting was very much on their minds, both 
as to what attitude they should take toward it 
with the younger girls (being upper-classmen 
themselves), and also how much renunciation of 
this pleasurable pastime was required of them. 
If I recall correctly, two entire mornings were de- 
voted to discussing the matter, two evenings, and 
another overflow meeting. 

So far as I could judge from their discussion 
groups, the girls did not advise younger classmen 
not to pet —they merely advised them to be 
moderate about it, not lose their heads, not go 
too far — in fact, the same line of conduct which 
is advised for moderate drinking. Learn temper- 
ance in petting, not abstinence. 

Before the conference I made it my business to 
talk to as many college girls as possible. I con- 
sulted as many, both in groups and privately, as I 
had time for at the conference. And since it is all 
to be repeated in another State this summer, I 


PETTING AND THE CAMPUS tor 


have been doing so, when opportunity offered, 
ever since. Just what does petting consist in? 
What ages take it most seriously? Is it a factor 
in every party? Do ‘nice’ girls do it, as well as 
those who are not so‘nice’? Are they ‘stringing’ 
their elders, by exaggerating the prevalence of 
petting, or is there more of it than they admit? 
These are samples of the questions I have asked, 
and have heard them ask each other in the dis- 
cussions where I have listened in. 

One fact is evident, that whether or not they 
pet, they hesitate to have any one believe that 
they do not. It is distinctly the mores of the time 
to be considered as ardently sought after, and as 
not too priggish to respond. As one girl said — ‘I 
don’t particularly care to be kissed by some of the 
fellows I know, but I’d let them do it any time 
rather than think I wouldn’t dare. As a matter of 
fact, there are lots of fellows I don’t kiss. It’s the 
very young kids that never miss a chance.’ 

I recall a wedding at which I was once a guest. 
It was on the island of Crete, and because of local 
custom the symbolism of marriage by capture had 
to be carried out in the ceremony. Our friend 
Evangelia, who had flirted quite openly and 
enthusiastically with Giorgio, had modestly to 
pretend to be prostrated at the idea of marrying 


192 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


him. Although a robust girl, custom decreed 
that she should be carried by stout grooms over 
the threshold of her father’s house, in an ap- 
parently fainting state of protest against her 
wedding. Only a faint wink at us out of the side 
of her eye, as she was borne past us, indicated 
that Evangelia was not quite so limp as she was 
obliged to pretend she was — in fact, not half so 
nervous as poor pale Giorgio waiting for her at 
the church. It was merely the mores of the situa- 
tion. Giorgio must act bold, although his knees 
were shaking, and Evangelia must simulate a 
collapse which she was far from feeling. Appar- 
ently the mores of to-day is that no one simulates 
anything — in itself a fine gesture of frankness. 

I wonder why veteran educators like Dr. 
Charles W. Eliot feel it necessary to urge college 
women toward matrimony. From my experience 
with them, I should say that never was such ad- 
vice less necessary. ‘The desire to marry and the 
fear lest one fail to do so is in my opinion the 
principal reason why petting is so prevalent and 
so unashamed. The economic pressure of to-day 
is so strong that young men are cautious about 
assuming the financial care of a family. The wave 
of popular feeling among the girls is away from 
the pursuit of independence, which was the goal 


PETTING AND THE CAMPUS _ 193 


of yesterday, to the desire for romance and mar- 
riage which has been their goal since marriage 
was invented. Since petting leads to ‘dates,’ and 
dates lead to more dates and to real romance, one 
must pet or be left behind. . 

That petting should lead to actual illicit rela- 
tions between the petters was not advised nor 
countenanced among the girls with whom I dis- 
cussed it. They drew the line quite sharply. 
That it often did so lead, they admitted, but they 
were not ready to allow that there were any more 
of such affairs than there had always been. 
School and college scandals, with their sudden 
departures and hasty marriages, have always 
existed to some extent, and they still do. But 
only accurate statistics, hard to arrive at, can 
prove whether or not the sex carelessness of the 
present day extends to an increase of sex immor- 
ality, or whether, since so many more people go to 
college, there is an actual decrease in the amount 
of it, in proportion to the number of students. 
The girls seemed to feel that those who went too 
far were more fools than knaves, and that in most 
cases they married. They thought that hasty 
and secret marriages, of which most of them 
could report several, were foolish, but after all 
about as likely to turn out well as any others. 


194 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Their attitude toward such contingencies was 
disapproval, but it was expressed with a slightly 
amused shrug, a shrug which one can imagine 
might have sat well on the shoulders of Voltaire. 
In fact the writer was torn, in her efforts to sum 
up their attitude, between classifying them as 
eighteenth-century realists, or as Greek nymphs 
existing before the dawn of history! 

I sat with one pleasant college Amazon, a 
total stranger, beside a fountain in the park, 
while she asked if I saw any harm in her kissing 
a young man whom she liked, but whom she did 
not want to marry. ‘It’s terribly exciting. We 
get such a thrill. I think it is natural to want 
nice men to kiss you, so why not do what is 
natural?’ There was no embarrassment in her 
manner. Her eyes and her conscience were 
equally untroubled. I felt as if a girl from the 
Parthenon frieze had stepped down to ask if she 
might not sport in the glade with a handsome 
faun. Why not, indeed? Only an equally direct 
forcing of twentieth-century science on primi- 
tive simplicity could bring us even to the same 
level in our conversation, and at that, the stigma 
of impropriety seemed to fall on me rather than 
on her. It was hard to tell whether her infantilism 
were real, or half-consciously assumed in order to 


PETTING AND THE CAMPUS | 195 


have a child’s license and excuse to do as she 
pleased. I am inclined to think that both with 
her and with many others, it is assumed. One 
girl said, ‘When I have had a few nights without 
dates, I nearly go crazy. I tell my mother she 
must expect me to go out on a fearful necking 
party.’ In different parts of the country, ‘pet- 
ting’ and ‘necking’ have opposite meanings. 
One locality calls ‘necking’ (I quote their de- 
finition), ‘petting only from the neck up.’ ‘Pet- 
ting’ involves anything else you please. Another 
section reverses the distinction, and the girl in 
question was from the latter area. In what 
manner she announces to her mother her plans 
to neck, and in what manner her mother accepts 
the announcement, I cannot be sure. 

But I imagine that the assumed childish at- 
titude of the daughter is reflected by her mother, 
who longs to have her daughter popular, and get 
her full share of masculine attention. And if the 
daughter takes for granted that what her mother 
does not know will not hurt her, so does her mo- 
ther’s habit of blind and deaf supervision indicate 
that she, too, does not want to know any more 
than she has to. The college student is no longer 
preéminently from a selected class. One has 
only to look at the names and family status in 


196 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


the college registers to see that. If petting is felt 
to be poor taste in some families, there are many 
more families of poor taste than there used to be, 
whose children go to college. Their daughters are 
pretty and their sons have money to spend, and 
they seem prodigies of learning and accomplish- 
ment, especially to their unlettered mothers, who 
glow with pride over their popularity. The pleas- 
ant side of the picture is that anybody’s daughter 
may go to college and pass on her own merits. 
The less agreeable side is that more refined but 
timid and less numerous stocks feel obliged to 
model their social behavior on the crude amo- 
rousness and doubtful pleasantries which prevail 
at peasant parties. If any one charges the daugh- 
ters with being vulgar, the chances are that the 
mothers, though more shy, are essentially just as 
vulgar. The mothers have no accomplishments 
in which the daughters cannot surpass them, or 
no alternate social grace or cultivated recreation 
to suggest, if petting is denied them. Indeed, 
that daughters are really at war with their mo- 
thers in point of view, I do not believe. On the 
contrary, thousands of mothers live all their emo- 
tional life in the gayety of their daughters — 
having nothing else to live it in; and they suffer 
quite as deeply as their daughters if maternal 


PETTING AND THE CAMPUS | 197 


strictness threatens to make wallflowers of them. 
Do not listen to what their mothers say, but 
watch them, if you want to know how they feel 
about their daughters petting! Their protests 
are about as genuine as the daughter’s ‘Aren’t 
you terrible?’ when a young man starts to pet. 

The sex manners of the large majority of un- 
cultivated and uncritical people have become the 
manners for all, because they have prospered, 
they are getting educated, and there are so many 
of them. They are not squeamish, and they never 
have been. But their children can set a social 
standard as the parents could not. The prudent 
lawyer’s child has no idea of letting the gay 
daughter of the broad-joking workman get the 
‘dates’ away from her. If petting is the weapon 
Miss Workman uses, then petting it must be, 
and in nine cases out of ten, not only Mrs. Work- 
man, but also Mrs. Lawyer, agree not to see too 
much. At heart both women are alike. Neither 
one can bear to see her daughter take a back 
seat in the struggle for popularity, and neither 
woman has any other ambition for her daughter 
but a successful husband. If, by any chance, 
petting led away from popularity and possible 
husbands instead of to them, the mothers would 
be whole-heartedly against it, and if they were —. 


198 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


petting, as a recognized recreation, would stop. 
I have become accustomed, in work with so- 
called delinquent girls, to find every delinquency 
easily explained by the family background. And 
I have never yet known a girl who was an ardent 
petter whose point of view was not easily trace- 
able to her mother’s weakness or her vanity. 
Sex reserve is not inborn any more than language 
is. Both must be acquired in early childhood to 
be used without an effort. The sex restraint or 
lack of it, which obtains in college, was developing 
through the grades and high school under a 
mother’s eye, which either saw, or tried not to 
see. ‘She doesn’t understand,’ is the girl’s com- 
ment on her mother, and there is a pathos in her 
defense of her mother’s ignorance and weak de- 
termination not to know too much. Obviously, 
however, one will make no progress with a girl 
by criticizing her mother, and rightly so. The 
mother is as much a product of her training as is 
the daughter, and there is no advantage in lower: 
ing self-respect when the object is to raise it. 
What arguments, then, will have weight with 
girls whose taste and feeling of restraint have not 
developed in their homes? Personally I have hit 
only upon two. One is the injustice of the fact 
that the girl whose family has climbed to a higher 


PETTING AND THE CAMPUS 199 


financial level can ‘get away with’ behavior for 
which the less favored working-girl is arrested. 
Many an incorrigible daughter of poor parents 
has been brought to the authorities because some 
neighbor, policeman, relative, or teacher has ob- 
served in her the tendency to persistent petting 
which my college graduate affirmed she indulged 
in and would always indulge in when she got the 
chance. Every evening, in the city, ‘gas hawks’ 
or roving young men in automobiles pick up the 
young girls as they come out from work, and ‘pet’ 
them even in the streets. They have done it out- 
side my window with an enthusiasm which even 
two large paper bags filled with water and hurled 
against their windshield by an interested specta- 
tor failed to cool. A college senior told me that 
she had dragged her dean (who did not believe 
her reports) around the campus after dark, and 
counted seventeen couples, swathed in rugs, 
caressing each other under the campus trees. As 
college students they are let alone. As little 
bundle-wrappers, power-machine operators, laun- 
dry sorters, and waitresses, they get arrested. As 
my Amazon said, ‘It is natural to do what I 
like.’ Very true. The only difficulty is that 
Tilly and Rosie, and Tony and Mike, say exactly 
the same thing. But when they pet in the park, 


200 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


having no other place to do it, the policeman 
turns a flashlight on them and orders them off on 
a charge of unseemly conduct. It is apparently 
one more thing which a poor girl cannot afford, 
and I have yet to find a college girl who did not 
feel this to be unfair. The sense of justice seems 
invariably very strong. The sense of personal 
modesty seems invariably rather weak. On the 
other hand, the ability to think directly to a 
point, and to admit the conclusion, is rather 
prevalent, provided the girls can be induced to 
try it. 

It is hardly an accident that my college student 
who came for vocational advice found the core of 
her problem to be that of marriage. For the aver- 
age girl it always is. This girl, like others, had 
carefully scrutinized both her mother and her 
strong-minded aunt, brought up on a vague 
philosophy of a possible Mr. Right waiting for 
them down the road, and she flatly declined to 
face so ambiguous an issue. ‘If he is there, go and 
get him. If he is not, go and find him,’ was her 
creed. If having a skilled vocation meant going 
without marriage, and vice versa (which from her 
observation of her mother and her maiden aunt 
seemed to be the case), she frankly preferred 
marriage and said so. So thought her mother 


PETTING AND THE CAMPUS 201 


(and perhaps her aunt) without saying so. To 
her, petting seemed the most direct route to what 
she wanted, and how could a candid soul think 
otherwise? This, then, is the second argument 
which seemed to interest the girls with whom I 
have spoken. If their training could perhaps 
hasten rather than retard their marriage, if, 
instead of waiting until some young man could 
afford to support them, they could without apolo- 
gies help to support themselves after their mar- 
riage, they thought that they might take their 
training more seriously. And they agreed that 
the girl who took her training more seriously had 
less time to spend on petting. One cannot be 
working in a laboratory, or making headway in 
business, or in the arts, and have much free time 
for getting into the situations where petting is the 
natural outcome. 

For petting depends on late nights and idle 
days, neither of which the more ambitious can af- 
ford. Granted the fact that not all college stu- 
dents are brilliant, and that the average human 
being is not ambitious, it is still true that when the 
average girl thinks that her training might mean 
the possibility of marrying earlier rather than 
late, it becomes more absorbing. Harnessed to ro- 
mance, training is worth hard work. Without it, 


202 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS. 


to the average girl, it is a literal no-man’s land, 
to be gotten over as quickly as possible. 

This, therefore, was the verdict of the jury. 
Petting is natural. We like it. Wesee no harm in 
it. No amount of professional training is going to 
make it less agreeable. But it takes time. It may 
go too far. It is pleasant to be made love to, but 
we would be willing to spend less time at it, and 
more on training for skilled work, if we thought 
that we should ever use such training when we 
were married — which we intend to be as soon as 
possible. If we can see a few married women with 
attractive homes, husbands and children, who 
still make any use of their specialized training, 
we shall believe that it can be done, and that it is 
worth doing. But we are from Missouri, and must 
be shown. Our mothers never used any specialized 
training after marriage, even if they had had it. 
We never saw a woman in our home town who 
did, unless she was so poor that she had to. 

Our special interest is chemistry (or dress 
designing, or music, or library work, or elec- 
tricity, or raising violets, or being a policewoman). 
If you can show us how we can specialize on this, 
and keep it up to any advantage after we are 
married, we will study it more seriously, and have 
less time to pet. Otherwise not. Or (more fre- 


PETTING AND THE CAMPUS ._. 203 


quently) we have no special interest and cannot 
get one, because all we want is to get married. If 
we thought any work would help us toward that, 
we would be interested. Otherwise not. It may be 
true that, if we seriously cultivate more varied 
talents than our mothers did, our daughters will 
not only love us, but admire us, and find us not so 
easy to surpass. But all that is too far in the fu- 
ture. We must secure our husbands before we 
can think too much about our daughters. So 
much for training. 

Now for justice. If girls of college standing 
are going to pet indiscriminately in their homes, 
their clubs, and their automobiles, then it is 
surely fair enough to leave unmolested the more 
lowly petters in the parks, the bathing beaches, 
the movie theaters, the dance-halls, and in the 
cars parked along the curb. Let them pet on, un- 
troubled by social reformers or the police. For 
petting is natural whatever its consequences. We 
like to do it, and so do they. As Kant would 
have it: The maxim of our action must become 
universal law. 

To this the jury agreed with hesitation and 
knitted brows. ‘That is only fair,’ they nodded 
slowly — and turned away sorrowful. 








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XII 
GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 


GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 


The intense love of parents for their children is a 
major instinct among the higher animals as well 
as among human beings, and operates no less 
powerfully even though the parents are uncon- 
scious of the force which moves them. Some 
phases of this instinctive manifestation, however, 
are transitory unless fixed by stabilizing habits, 
and the devotion of the parent for the young child 
may fade into indifference or hostility in later 
years, because of an environment which is inade- 
quate for the development of mutual love. 

According to James: Most instincts are im- 
planted for the sake of giving rise to habits. If no 
habit of acting on them is formed, many instincts 
ripen at a certain age, then fade away or are weak- 
ened or warped in their later appearance. 


XII 
GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 


GRACIE was the large brunette at one end of the 
chorus in the Bantam Burlesque, and Goldie was 
the small girl at the other end, who, by much 
application of peroxide and lemon juice, had 
succeeded in becoming a gilt-edged blonde. 
Gracie was nineteen, had a big resonant voice, 
and did the sentimental songs, as well as the 
‘coon-shouting’ and ‘blues.’ Goldie was seven- 
teen, and her voice was nothing but a rasp, 
squealed off-key through her nose. But she had 
that mysterious possession known as ‘a good 
line,’ did some funny eccentric dances, and the 
audiences at the Bandbox were not particular 
about their music provided the girls were lively. 
As was to be expected, each girl admired her own 
accomplishments prodigiously, and expressed a 
voluble scorn and suspicion of her rival in a jeal- 
ousy which added much thrill and excitement to 
their lives. 

But each had other admirers beside herself. 
Gracie was often met after the show by a heavy 
man reported to be of great wealth in the tobacco 


208 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


business. No one knew much about him. But 
Goldie was in love with Jake, the solo saxophonist 
in the orchestra. He was sleek and shiny of hair, 
with narrow patent-leather pumps, and the black- 
est of black eyes. He could sob on his saxophone 
in every trick position invented by jazz clowns, 
and he and Goldie had invented a few dances in 
which he would leap to the stage and dance with 
her, imitating her nasal wails on his instrument as 
they danced. This was really very funny, for 
both of them had streaks of the genuine comedian 
in them, as well as some acrobatic skill, and Jake 
in his way was a real musician. He relished the 
humor of Goldie’s singing which was so poor that 
she made a feature of it, and the imitation of it 
with his throbbing horn was the very spirit of 
buffoonery. 

It was just before Christmas and the Bantam 
was doing its biggest business, somewhat handi- 
capped by the absence of Gracie, who had vaguely 
disappeared, and was supposed to have gone off 
with her stout tobacco merchant. Goldie, there- 
fore, had everything her own way. But in spite of 
the holiday gayety, she was somewhat out of 
sorts, had a cold which took the edge off her 
singing, and a limp which prevented her dancing, 
and altogether was not making the most of her 


GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 209 


opportunity of being for the present so unex- 
pectedly rid of her rival. 

On one desperately cold night, with the ther- 
mometer dropping lower hour by hour, and the 
wind like a knife — Goldie crept down the back 
stairs of the theater the moment her song was 
over, ran through the alley and into the street 
leading toward the lake. It was not likely to be 
frequented at this hour of a freezing night, and 
she took some odd, halting steps down the icy 
sidewalk — not an eccentric dance, but more in 
the nature of a stagger. Stub Kelly, the taxi 
driver, gliding slowly about on the lookout for a 
late passenger, watched her with a sigh. These 
show girls with their theatrical dashes to the lake, 
from which some repentant escort was supposed 
to drag them, bored Stub, especially on cold 
nights. He looked back of him to find the escort. 
*‘She’s soused, and so is he, likely. But that kind 
pay pretty well,’ he reflected, so he slowly followed 
the swaying Goldie, although he could detect no 
suitor in the offing. ‘Wonder where she gets her 
moonshine. It sure has got a kick,’ he mused, as 
he discreetly rolled along behind her, honking 
invitingly at intervals. ‘That girl’s pickled. She’ll 
freeze if her sweetie don’t turn up.’ 

But still no ‘sweetie’ appeared, and to Stub’s 


210 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


surprise Goldie suddenly struck off from the road 
and started over the dingy snow toward a tree on 
the dump. The lake was frozen in great cakes 
which creaked and rumbled and cracked in the 
icy wind. One lone tree bent inward from the 
strong lake blast. Against its trunk Goldie 
stumbled and leaned, clutching it spasmodically, 
while Stub watched her and sighed again. If 
there was one passenger he hated worse than the 
kind he thought she was before, it was the kind 
he knew she was now. Like any taxi driver of 
experience he had them from time to time, and 
like them all, he dreaded them above all things, 
and wanted to beat a retreat at once. Goldie 
would never have been the wiser, for she saw 
neither him nor anything in the wide universe 
but her tree. Nor would any one else have known. 
An anonymous call to the nearest police station 
would satisfy almost any taxi conscience. It 
just happened that in such cases Stub was known 
to be Irish and a ‘softy,’ and for some reason the 
Goldies, as he admitted, ‘got his goat’ —in a 
world where not many things did. 

So he drove to the curb nearest the lake-front 
dump and honked mildly at first, then with more 
vigor. It was evident, however, that Goldie did 
not hear him. He sighed again, and climbed down 


GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 211 


from the seat and walked toward her. ‘Want 
some help, girlie?’ he said gently. The words 
might have been those of a professional ‘gas- 
hawk,’ but they were not uttered in tones of 
blandishment, nor was there a trace of coquetry 
in the stare which Goldie turned toward him. 
Her hat was pushed over her face, on which the 
paint stood out in purple patches against her livid 
cheeks. The wind howled and blew the snow in 
gusts off the blocks of lake ice, through which an 
arc light threw its blue glare on Goldie’s distorted 
mouth. It was drawn back from her teeth, and 
twisted into a grimace of agony, as she slipped 
down her tree toward the ice beneath it. ‘How 
about a ride home, kiddo? Need your mother, 
don’t you?’ shouted Stub against the wind. 
Then he muttered, ‘Oh, hell,’ picked her up, laid 
her in the car, and headed for the hospital with 
his foot on the gas. 

‘Found her by the lake,’ he explained to the 
night nurse, who gave her patient one look, and 
told the orderly to ‘make it snappy.’ ‘She won’t 
tell her name, but she looks like the kid who 
dances at the Bantam.’ 

‘That Bantam!’ snorted the nurse, and 
shrugged her shoulders. She had met some 
members of its chorus before. 


212 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


The next morning found Goldie lying in a ward, 
very dazed and very sullen. Her daze and sullen- 
ness were so complete that they amounted almost 
to astupor. She looked neither to the right nor to 
the left. She would not speak to the nurse, nor 
answer when they spoke to her. She was filled 
with resentment so utter and absorbing that her 
face was aged and hardened by it. The Goldie of 
yesterday would not have wanted to look so old 
and pinched, but the Goldie of to-day did not care. 
She wondered that she lived at all, she was so en- 
raged with life. The head nurse came in and looked 
her over, pushed her slightly to one side of the 
bed, and laid a small bundle beside her. ‘Your 
son wants you,’ she remarked briefly, and left the 
two together. A spasm of rage rose up in Goldie’s 
breast and almost stifled her. She wondered that 
they dared leave a child beside her, when they 
ought to know that she would murder it. But she 
did not move a muscle. She lay in the same stupor 
of resentment, while other nurses with other bun- 
dles hurried to and fro down the ward. There 
seemed to be a general commotion as of a frog 
pond on a spring evening, when all the little frogs 
start chirping at once. From forty little throats 
came forty variations of the same refrain in which 
some shrill soprano croakings stood out against 


GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 213 


the lustier background of stout young baritones 
and basses. 

Suddenly the unquenchable comedian in Goldie 
began to titter. ‘I bet Jake could do that on the 
old horn,’ she thought, and suddenly there was a 
little squirm at her side, and a squeak as ineffec- 
tual as her own singing voice joined feebly in the 
froggish chorus. She was so startled at this sound 
that she forgot her rage for one instant, and 
involuntarily glanced into the bundle. There, 
- swathed in blankets, and with a towel slipping 
over his forehead — there was Jake blinking up 
at her with his shiny black eyes, playing a trick 
saxophone in his throat. Goldie was completely 
taken back at this apparition. She lay gazing at 
it in silence, then she twitched the towel still 
farther over one black eye, ‘Jake on a jag — for 
the Lord’s sake!’ she whispered, staring. But she 
shut her eyes as she saw a nurse approaching. 
Goldie still lay as in a stupor, but with new and 
even more overwhelming sensations added to her 
daze. What preposterous little creature had the 
effrontery to lie squawking at her side? She had 
hitherto ignored the very possibility of his exist- 
ence. She had turned from the sometimes in- 
sistent warning of his advent, with a skill bred 
of years of ignoring all obligations which she did 


214 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


not mean to meet. She had run away from rent 
collections and food bills. She had escaped the 
installment agent by way of the back door, and 
the police, more than once, by the fire escape. 
It must be possible somehow to dodge a helpless 
little nobody who so dumbly but so persistently 
accompanied her like her shadow. But here he 
was — gazing at her with the fixed ill-focussed 
stare of the newly born. ‘No one ever out- 
lamped me yet,’ she reflected, and glared back 
at him as soon as the nurse was out of sight. The 
little black eyes did not waver. Then there was a 
prodigious yawn and his eyes shut. ‘Wore him 
out,’ thought Goldie, turning away, much pleased 
with herself — but glanced back to find his shut 
eyes had been but a ruse. He was staring at her 
more fixedly than ever. ‘Rubbers worse than me,’ 
she mused. ‘I wish Jake could see the darned 
little mutt.’ 

Then it suddenly came over her what it would 
be like to have a big Jake show the slightest inter- 
est and pride ina little Jake. The thought brought 
back her rage, resentment, and self-pity, and she 
threw herself over on her side to gaze upon the 
face of Gracie, catching sight of her aghast from 
the adjacent bed. The encounter was too sudden 
for either girl to have a chance to hide from the 


GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 215 


other. For once, the self-possession of both com- 
pletely deserted them. With jaws dropping, the 
two girls stared at each other, and when the words 
of abuse with which both were so familiar rose 
automatically to their lips, they died unuttered. 
‘Lying side by each in the maternity ward sure 
cramps your style when it comes to mud-slinging,’ 
as Goldie afterward truly remarked. 

‘How long you been here?’ Goldie finally 
managed to ask. 

‘Ten days—leaving to-morrow,’ answered 
Gracie. 

‘Thought you’d run off and got married,’ said 
Goldie. 

‘Going to the justice next week.’ 

‘To the justice?’ burst out Goldie jealously, 
rising on her elbow. ‘How’d you work that? A 
shotgun or the kid?’ 

‘The kid’s dead,’ said Gracie. 

‘Oh, dead, is it?’ said Goldie, sinking back, as if 
that answered all questions. ‘No such luck here. 
Look at what I drew,’ and she held up little 
Jakie, whose blackberry eyes still peered from his 
blankets, and who was sucking mildly at an 
imaginary milk supply. ‘Ever see anything 
worse than that to have wished on you?’ she in- 
quired sardonically. 


216 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


‘Yes, I have,’ answered Gracie — ‘I’ve seen 
one dead’ — and she suddenly turned her face to 
the wall. 

For Goldie to marry Jake presented no marked 
advantages beyond the rather mythical one of 
providing little Jake with a name. As yet his 
father knew nothing of his existence, and Goldie 
was in no hurry to inform him. Jakie could wait 
for his last name. Even his first one was only his 
by a kind of natural right. His ludicrous resem- 
blance to his sleek, beady-eyed father, both in his 
face and in his saxophonic utterance, made Goldie 
call him Jakie only because he was Jakie, and she 
could call him nothing else. What Jakie needed 
more than a surname was someone who could 
guarantee him an adequate milk diet. The little 
fellow had not taken kindly to any brands as yet 
provided, which ranged from patent foods in a 
bottle to condensed from a can, but which were 
all alike in disagreeing with him, and in costing 
more money than Goldie could spare. 

In the matter of paying milk bills, Jake was no 
better off than she, for whereas he earned more, 
he already had a mother and a grandmother to 
support. His father, somewhat gifted and wholly 
unreliable, had drifted off the scene years before, 
leaving his own mother for his weak and sickly 


GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 214 


wife to feed. When Jake showed an inheritance of 
his father’s musical gift, and could play not only 
every tune, but almost every noise he heard, on 
his saxophone, his mother gave up her feeble 
efforts to earn their food and rent by working ina 
laundry, and expected nineteen-year-old Jake to 
give her the living which his father had failed to 
provide. Although something of an invalid, she 
was only forty, so was likely to live on forever, 
and effectually to prevent Jake from ever being 
able to support a family of his own. The old 
grandmother, of whom Jake was rather fond, and 
of whose eyes he was the very apple, was crippled 
with rheumatism, and could never work again, 
although she too came of long-lived stock, and 
had an excellent appetite. Goldie had been at 
their rooms to practice some dance steps with 
Jake. She liked the old lady who had praised the 
way in which Goldie imitated some of her girlish 
dance steps from her description. 

Goldie would have sacrificed her feelings, to be 
sure, if it would have done her any good. But 
since no more money could be extracted from 
Jake than he had —the amount of which she 
knew to a penny —and his two parents were 
more dependent on him than she, she was in no 
hurry to marry for the sake of a living she could 


218 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


not get, and, on the contrary, run the risk of 
having to support his dependents in case Jake 
took it into his head to follow his father’s example 
and run away. She was fond of Jake and always 
had been. But marriage was an economic pro- 
position not to be entered into too lightly with 
a baby to support. 

So Goldie went to a rooming-house, left the 
baby with the landlady, and got a job. Her first 
venture was in astore selling gloves. But Jakie was 
so fretful, and it took so much time to feed him, 
that the landlady said she could not bother with 
him at any price his mother could pay. Several 
store and factory jobs and endless rooming- 
houses ended in the same dilemma. Evidently 
Goldie must stay at home with her son and feed 
him, and the only place where a girl with a baby 
to feed can be employed is in a house. For Goldie 
the show girl even to contemplate work in any 
one’s kitchen shows how she had been shaken 
from her customary habits. Kitchen drudgery 
filled her with the contempt and loathing usual 
in her class. But in spite of the fact that she tried 
to give satisfaction, and the housekeepers who 
employed her tried to be satisfied, the experiment 
was never a success. Goldie’s standards of 
housekeeping were those of the shabbiest room- 


GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 219 


ing-houses and the dressing-rooms of cheap 
theaters. Disorder and dirty dishes, tattered 
finery, and eating and sleeping at odd hours, 
constituted the atmosphere in which she had al- 
ways felt at home. She had always fed more upon 
jokes, dance steps, joy-rides, and applause from 
dingy burlesque audiences, than she had upon 
calories or vitamins. To be thrust suddenly into a 
modern housekeeper’s kitchen, with nooks and 
crevices to be mopped, refrigerators to be kept 
full of ice, kettles scrubbed on the outside, and 
meals produced on time, was as much beyond her 
ken as if she were an alley kitten. The latter de- 
mand especially amazed her. Hitherto she had 
dropped into a delicatessen when she was hungry, 
or had got some one to feed her after the show, 
when she was broke. The incomprehensible 
women for whom she worked, with their eyes on 
the clock, flew at a meal according to its dictates, 
and demanded that it be on the table as punc- 
tually as a showman rings up the curtain. Usually 
when it was prepared, not without heat and worry, 
the family had to be drummed up from the piazza, 
the garage, or the bathtub to eat it. 

‘Why not wait till the gang’s hungry?’ Goldie 
would inquire. ‘Skip a meal now and then and 
they’d hop into line.’ But this practical sugges- 


220 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


tion never met with a favorable response. ‘These 
fat women have to look at the clock to see if it’s 
time to get hungry and eat a meal. But I suppose 
they’re hungry all the time — that’s why they’re 
fat,’ she reflected philosophically. 

Most of her employers, to their credit be it 
said, were genuinely sorry for her, and tried to 
help her for the sake of the baby, who, of course, 
was a great inconvenience. But Goldie’s complete 
lack of any housewifely instincts usually wore out 
their patience, and she was unable to pretend to 
an interest in their monotonous schedules and 
solemn rites. To pour hot rinsing water on the 
dishes, for instance, when Heaven knew they had 
already been washed clean beyond all reason, was 
a continual irritation. In vain did housekeepers 
tell her that unrinsed dishes were a menace. 
Goldie had eaten off too many of them and had 
survived. 

The simple fact was that Goldie was a grass- 
hopper, born of grasshoppers, and bred to no 
other purpose but the hopping and skipping of 
grasshoppers in a third-rate show. In the insect 
world, such birth and breeding gives one the 
right to fulfill the vocation for which one was 
born and bred. But in the human world, only 
those with a bank account are entitled to carry 


GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 221 


out such antics. A poor young female of the hu- 
man species, no matter what her inheritance or 
training, must be an ant or a busy bee. The leap- 
ings of the grasshopper world are only for those 
who can afford them, and Goldie emphatically 
could not. 

One evening, after a day in which she had 
melted the coffee pot, left food to spoil in an iceless 
ice-box, and nearly set them all on fire with an 
electric iron which she had forgotten to detach — 
Goldie strolled disconsolately up and down the 
walk, pushing little Jakie in his go-cart. 

Suddenly she heard, in a well-known voice, 
‘For the Lord’s sake — Goldie! Where the hell 
you been?’ — and Jake strolled up behind her. 
His saxophone was under his arm. He was on his 
way, it appeared, to play in a jazz orchestra 
for a college dance. ‘Taken to baby-farming?’ 
he asked, staring in amazement. Then — ‘You 
ain’t married, are you, Goldie?’ he added slowly. 

Goldie stared back at him in silence. She had 
seen him but once since the night she disappeared 
from the show, and that was one evening when 
she had stolen back into the audience, and 
watched the kicking of the chorus and Jake’s 
trick playing, in a bitter incognito. She had sent 
him ne word, asked nothing from him, and had 


222 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


never made up her mind whether or not she ever 
would. But here he was, through no contrivance 
of hers. On a sudden impulse she pushed back 
the top of the baby coach and turned little Jakie 
so that his father could get a look at him directly 
in the eyes. 

‘Yours?’ he whispered under his breath. 

‘Yours!’ she answered. 

He started back as if struck in the face, and the 
color raced into his cheeks, suffused his forehead, 
tinged his ears, and ran down his neck. The sleek 
and slender Jake for once was as completely off 
his guard as Goldie and Gracie had been when first 
they gazed at each other in the hospital. The same 
elemental force had him in its grip. He started to 
take his breath for a burst of denial of his pater- 
nity, for vituperation against Goldie’s character, 
and sneers against the little creature whose black 
eyes blinked at him from a fuzzy drooping head. 
But his words, too, stuck in his throat. How 
vituperate against a girl, thin, unrouged, and 
shabby, who had asked nothing from him? How 
argue with a visible miniature of himself, sleepily 
blowing bubbles in his face? Indeed, how 
associate guilt or intrigue with anything so in- 
conceivably innocent? Speechless they looked 
upon little Jakie, silenced by an emergency 


GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 223 


which no grasshopper jumpings, nor saxophone 
chromatics had trained them to meet. 

‘Is it sick — or something?’ Jake finally ven- 
tured. 

Goldie’s eyes filled. ‘Yes, he is. He can’t keep 
what he eats. Something’s wrong with him.’ 

‘Can’t you leave it at a hospital — in a basket? 
— you know,’ he asked, as his feeble contribution 
to Jakie’s well-being. 

‘I’ve tried it, but I can’t. He lays his little 
head on my shoulder, as if he was trying not to 
make trouble, and I can’t leave him no more than 
I can jump in the lake. I’ve tried that, too.’ 

Jake reached in his pocket and shoved some 
small change into her hand —‘I’ll be round 
again,’ he called back as he turned abruptly and 
ran down the street. 

Goldie got a place in another less exacting 
kitchen, and Jake called fairly often when his 
business permitted. He never asked for the baby, 
but his black eyes roved about to find him as soon 
as he entered the kitchen, and Goldie, thinner, 
and more forlorn, would bring him in, and sit with 
his tiny black thatch drooping even more weakly 
against her shoulder. 

‘He don’t even cry much any more. It looks 
like he was saying — “‘I thought I was wanted, so 


224 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


I come. Why wouldn’t I? Then I found I wasn’t 
wanted, so I started to go. Now you change your 
mind and want me to stay. But it’s too late. I 
can’t make the grade.”’ His little head just lays 
there’ — and Goldie would sob in exhaustion. 

Jake would sometimes protest roughly ‘Cut it 
out about that kid’s head,’ and leave in what 
looked like irritation. It was true that Goldie was 
not very cheerful company, and made none of her 
old-time effort to amuse him. But in a few days 
Jake would be back again, and his roving eyes 
would search for the baby as before. 

Finally his orchestra had to leave town for a 
fortnight to play in a carnival. When he returned 
to Goldie’s kitchen, she was not there. 

The mistress answered him somewhat suspi- 
ciously, ‘You her brother? Well, you’re too late. 
She’s gone, and the baby’s dead.’ 

‘Dead?’ echoed Jake blankly. 

‘Sure, it’s dead. Never could keep a thing on 
its stomach. I did all I could, but it had a bad 
start. I wonder it lived as long as it did. It laid 
its little head —’ but Jake had turned and was 
running down the street. 

A few weeks later, Goldie was back in the bur- 
lesque chorus. Gracie had married money was 
the rumor, and had left for New York. Goldie 


GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 225 


had been visiting her relatives, she explained 
— ‘And they sure did treat you rough, girlie,’ 
commented the other girls. ‘You must have hit 
the pace pretty hard, by your looks. Good thing 
you came back for a rest cure.’ 

It would be pleasant to report that all this had 
turned Goldie into a hard-working little ant, and 
that she and Jake, happily married, now take the 
little ants to picnics by the lake in a partly paid- 
for Ford — like millions of others who only differ 
from them in that they had aslightly better start. 
But so far, such is not the case. Goldie is still a 
grasshopper, and hops better than she will ever 
cook, sew, or mop. Jake looks like a cricket, still 
sleek and shiny. But his mother and grandmother 
are good for thirty years’ more consumption of 
his earnings, so he is doomed to be an ant in an 
anthill not his own. The net result of Jakie’s 
coming and departure is that Goldie drops her 
spare nickels into the box in the drug-store (with 
a baby’s picture on it) that collects small cash 
for some dubious charity. She has watched one 
baby die of slow starvation and these nickels help 
to drug the memory. And Jake buys his news- 
paper of a little black-eyed newsboy whom he 
addresses as ‘Son.’ ‘The kid looks like I did,’ he 
explains. That’s about all. Goldie still has a 


226 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


pretty good line, and amuses her rather grimy 
audience, although the management sometimes 
finds fault. ‘You sang something terrible last 
night, Goldie. ‘‘YourR HrEap Lay on My 
SHOULDER, BUT ITS WEIGHT Ligs ON My 
HEartT,” is a swell song — no comedy. It’s the 
real stuff, but you murdered it. You made 
Jake’s wind break on his sax, and he never done 
that before. He covered it up pretty well, but 
you didn’t. You got worse and worse.’ 

Goldie hopes to try the New York variety 
shows next, and Jake secretly plans to pipe his 
lay in new fields and leave his relatives to the 
Charities. What are they for if not for that? — 
Which all goes to show that if one wants citizens 
who ply the industry of the ant in the steadfast 
rays of righteousness, a poor way to get them is to 
train up little grasshoppers, who know no fervors 
but the volcanoes of their own instincts, into 
whose dead craters they fall, dry and shriveled 
husks, before they are twenty-one. 


XIII 
SILK STOCKINGS 


SILK STOCKINGS 


Egotism is the instinct which prompts us to con- 
sider our own persons as supremely important, 
and to suffer if we are not held in high esteem by 
our associates. It is at the basis of all legitimate 
ambition and self-respect, as well as being the 
root of selfishness; the form of its expression de- 
pending upon its early training and control. 

The sense of inferiority which results when 
egotism has no legitimate satisfaction is excep- 
tionally strong in youth, and when complicated 
by foreign background and scanty purse often 
leads to anti-social behavior. The egotism of the 
untrained girl is apt to express itself in noticeable 
dress, for dress is to her a symbol of social pres- 
tige, sex attainment, and personal worth. 


XIII 
SILK STOCKINGS 


SIXTEEN is a romantic age, and Anna was sixteen. 
She was also a candy-packer, and received for this 
labor twelve dollars a week. Of this sum she paid 
seven dollars to her father for room and board, 
and the joint care of her little brother who was 
still in school, seventy-two cents for car-fares to 
work, a dollar and a half to take herself and her 
little brother to the movies Wednesday, Saturday, 
and Sunday nights, and twenty-five cents for 
stamps and note-paper. This left exactly two 
dollars and fifty-three cents each week to spend 
for shoes, aprons, rouge, underwear, dentist, 
movie magazines, extra car-fare, gum, talcum 
powder, overshoes, hair nets, dresses, insurance 
for her funeral, insurance for her little brother’s 
funeral, hair-curlers, a winter coat, a summer hat 
...and silk stockings. 

To purchase all these necessities on two dollars 
and fifty-three cents a week requires some finan- 
cial engineering. The reason for the board money 
was that her father had been out of work and was 
in debt. The reason for the movies was, that of 


230 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


course one had to go. The reason for the stamps 
and note-paper was that Anna had a correspond- 
ent to whom she wrote daily. She had never seen 
him, but she had found his address in the paper, 
and Anna was romantic. 

Her letters written every evening and around 
which her imagination circled all day, were on 
this order: 

Dear Bud, 

Say, Kid, I sure am lonesome. Do you like sweet 
sixteen? That’s me. I saw the swell film last night, 
The Woman Pays. That’s God’s truth. She sure 
does. Ain’t it the truth? Think of me when you read 
this. I sure think of you. How many girls you got or 
am I the only one? I sure am true. Are you? Here’s 
time to close. You know what crosses mean, don’t say 
you don’t. You ain’t no canary, but I am a chicken. 
Haha joke. your Anna. 


Every evening Anna penned variations of this 
theme and while they may not have conveyed 
much valuable information, at least they were 
letters, they relieved her feelings, and they took 
as much note-paper and postage as if she had 
said something. 

In the course of this interchange of mutual 
regard, the unseen one had written that he had got 
married, but that a friend was willing to assume 
the burden of answering her letters. This shift 


SILK STOCKINGS 231 


was perfectly satisfactory to Anna, and the cor- 
respondence continued to flourish without a jolt 
in the machinery or a change of literary style. 

Any story of Anna’s career would be incom- 
plete which left out a determining factor of her 
life, which was that, although only sixteen, she 
weighed one hundred and eighty-five pounds. 
She sprang from a stock built for long hours of 
labor in a Russian wheat-field, and long hours on a 
stool in an American candy factory had made her 
proportions unduly generous for her age. Hence 
the fact that an interchange of letters with an 
unseen admirer flourished more vigorously than 
dance dates with the boys whom she saw and 
admired, but who asked other girls to go with 
them. 

And hence the peculiarly critical problem of 
her silk stockings. 

As every woman knows, the bargains in silk 
stockings, the sales where leftovers, and artificial 
silks, and factory seconds, are disposed of for 
eighty-five cents, cannot be patronized by out- 
sized legs. Let slender little girls of attenuated 
stock wear them if they will. Stout Anna, fresh 
from the farm with heavy bones and muscles 
strong as iron, could not average more than two 
weeks to a pair of good quality. As for an inferior 


232 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


make, she could scarcely wear them a day without 
that dismal cracking sound followed by a ‘run,’ 
which put them as much out of commission as a 
silk hat run over by a truck. For Anna nothing 
short of a two-dollar pair was worth the buying. 
So obviously, an average bi-weekly investment 
of two dollars for hosiery meant that all the other 
necessities of life must be bought for one dollar 
and fifty-three cents. Such was Anna’s budget. 

Now comes the obvious comment. Since silk 
stockings are so expensive and so perishable — 
why buy them? What right had Anna to a luxury 
which she could not afford? And therein lies the 
whole story. The simple fact was, that to Anna 
and to all her friends, silk stockings were far more 
to be desired than heaven or food. 

Many were the devices by which other articles 
of dress were imitated or their absence concealed. 
Hats, blouses, sweaters, and capes could be bor- 
rowed, dyed, made over, and camouflaged in a 
hundred ways. As for all undergarments that did 
not show, they were cheerfully dispensed with. 

But stockings! One cannot make them, borrow 
them, nor go without. Disagree as the girls in 
the factory often did in their arguments about 
religion, the relative merits of carnation versus 
violet perfume, the duty of giving one’s pay to 


SILK STOCKINGS 233 


one’s parents, and the desirability of early mar- 
riage — on one point they were all agreed. Ameri- 
can ladies must wear stockings, and those stock- 
ings must be of silk. The mothers of the girls 
denied this; but the daughters gave to their mo- 
thers’ opinions the same kindly but condescend- 
ing shrug which we all bestow upon the quaint 
notions of the foreign-born. 

They had used their eyes on the street, in the 
movies, in the shops, and even in the churches 
and the schools, and it had been amply demon- 
strated to them that American ladies never 
ventured forth in the kind of stockings which 
foreign mothers thought their daughters should 
afford. 

‘My mother, she says she don’t see no sense to 
wearing silk ones,’ said Rosie Procincio. ‘She says 
they’re extravagant. But she don’t see no sense to 
wearing any at all, half the time. She just don’t 
understand.’ And the other girls wagged their 
heads wisely. 

In America one must do as the Americans do, 
a fact which their parents could not grasp. Rosie 
got her silk stockings by withholding from her 
mother the news that she had got a raise, and 
pocketing the surplus. Letty worked Saturday 
afternoons and saved the overtime for stockings. 


234 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS | 


Suzanne took the money allowed her for her lunch. 
Whereas stolid Mame could think of no more 
subtle method than to take what she wanted from 
her pay envelope when necessary, and to endure 
the subsequent parental punishment with a 
philosophy developed through years of family 
squabbles. 

Anna, after an argument with a thrifty family 
friend, and an unusually penniless week, had once 
gone selfconsciously to work in cotton hose. She 
was met with — ‘Who put bandages on the grand 
piano, Anna?’ — ‘Are you sixty? I thought you 
wuz sixteen.’ — ‘That’s right, girlie, save your 
money. I wisht I could.’— ‘Did you dance your 
feet out of the other pair, or are you saving ’em 
in your hope chest?’ — ‘Better wear ’em before 
you re married for you'll never get ’em afterwards.’ 
— ‘Why not paint some on, and save all your 
money?’ — Andsoonandsoon. Poor Anna tried 
to make a few bright sallies in return, but she was 
not very quick of speech, and, after all, what could 
she say? The other girls had stated the exact 
truth. 

She had laid aside her one extra pair against the 
time when she might meet her unseen friend at the 
station, and walk proudly with him to the priest. 
But this evening after work she could hardly get 


SILK STOCKINGS 235 


home fast enough to pull them out of the old 
orange-crate which figured as her hope chest. 
They represented some weeks of saving, for they 
were chiffon hose of the four-dollar variety. She 
sighed a little that they must be wasted on the 
factory instead of being saved for Frank. But 
she had no choice. She knew that she could never 
bear another day of such humiliation as that 
which she had just passed through. The next 
morning a chorus of ‘Gee, look at the swell socks! 
Who’s your friend? I'll bet they set back the poor 
gink for five berries.’ — ‘Don’t put your wad in 
that bank, Anna. The spider-web national ain’t 
safe.’ — ‘Say, girlie, give me the loan of ’em 
to-night. They just match my new kicks’ — and 
similar cheerful comments, salved all wounds, and 
Anna’s self-respect was restored. 

But the greatest event in Anna’s life hitherto, 
was yet to come. One evening about a week after 
this episode, she found a letter waiting for her 
on her return from the factory. It ran: 


Dear anna, how is it can you come? I got house and 
fonograf most paid for. good job to. if you like be my 
wife come 10.30 train to sladeville if you dont want it, 
send back ticket. law will get you if you take ticket 
and don’t come, but you come and have nice home 
near pictures. hope you can work good. I love you. 

Frank 


236 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Now a proposal is an interesting event to any 
woman at any time, no matter what her age or 
her occupation. But a proposal to sixteen-year- 
old Anna, after a year in a candy factory with no 
local beaux, a trip to an unknown city full of 
pictures, and a lover’s proof of sincerity in the 
shape of a railroad ticket was enough to take her 
breath away. It meant leaving her father and 
brother without a housekeeper; but Anna could 
not even face the possibility of not using her 
ticket at once. She avoided argument when 
possible, so she decided to take no risk of refusal 
from her father, but to run away. A hurried post- 
card ornamented with a highly colored pair of 
lovers sent word to Frank when he might expect 
his bride. 

The next morning she got her father’s breakfast, 
hurried her brother off to school, and opened her 
purse. There would be no pay from the factory 
for another week, but she could not wait for that. 
With her last twelve dollars she had already paid 
her board and loaned three dollars to her father. 
That left two dollars. She had also paid fifty 
cents for a movie and fifty cents for fares, which 
left her with three quarters and two dimes after 
the postcard had been mailed. She laid the coins 
and the ticket on the table, and turned to pack 


SILK STOCKINGS 237 


the contents of the orange-crate in a newspaper. 
Then she bent down incautiously, to put on her 
best slippers. Crack — the threads of the over- 
worked chiffon hose gave way, and two runs tore 
like lightning from each ruptured knee and dis- 
appeared into the toe of each slipper. In an in- 
stant both stockings were the most hopeless 
wrecks that ever faced an exasperated bride. 
This was too much. The train went within an 
hour. She had got to be in it, and she had got to 
greet her lover in silk stockings. There was but 
one way. She gave a hasty twist to the remnants 
which she wore, tied up her bundle, and hurried 
to the store on the corner where she did so much 
of her ‘window shopping.’ While the woman in 
charge was waiting on another customer, Anna 
slipped a pair of stockings from the counter under 
her bundle and walked out of the store. Once 
around the corner she ran for the train as fast as 
she could go. At the station a wait of a few min- 
utes ended her suspense, and she was seated hot 
and breathless in the train for a three-hour run to 
Sladeville. 

The excitement of her journey completely 
eclipsed any pricks of conscience for her theft. 
She could think of nothing but the joy ahead, and 
(after the change had been made in the women’s 


238 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


compartment) of how nice her feet looked, even 
if the slippers were so tight that they hurt. 
Sladeville boasted but a small station, much less 
imposing than the one she had left, but it had the 
advantage that in its small waiting-room there 
would be no chance of missing Frank. Although 
she had no idea how he looked, her dreams had 
pictured him in the likeness of Rudolph Val- 
entino, and her wish was father to her thoughts. 

But no Rudolph remained after the other 
passengers had left the station; no one but a small 
swarthy elderly man who was nervously wiping 
a bald brow with a blue bandana handkerchief. 
Anna stood ready to cry with disappointment, and 
the elderly man looked equally distressed. 

Finally he stepped up to Anna, ‘Did you see a 
nice little girl on that train, named Anna — Anna 
Kopsky?’ he asked, furtively making sure of the 
name from a postcard in his hand. | 

Anna stared at him and at the card, with 
amazement. 

‘That’s my name,’ she said; and then an idea 
striking her, ‘Did Frank Severino ask you to 
come for me?’ she inquired eagerly. 

The little man stared. ‘I am Frank Severino,’ 
he gasped huskily. 

Never did dreams meet facts with a ruder clash. 


SILK STOCKINGS 239 


Anna’s mind was so full of her Rudolph image that 
she could hardly believe her eyes. As for poor 
Frank, the lonely widower, his idle fancy of a girl 
slender and dark, such as he used to dance with 
when he was a boy in Italy, was so overwhelmed 
by the actuality of the powerful Anna, that he 
instinctively edged away from her and glanced 
toward the door. 

But his wits speedily came back, for after all he 
was experienced in the ways of women, having 
had two wives, and several daughters of Anna’s 
age. He recovered his voice first. 

‘Maybe you no like this town,’ he insinuated, 
sidling toward the ticket office. ‘Maybe you want 
to go home.’ 

Anna was crying, but she nodded her head, and 
accepted the ticket which Frank soon shoved into 
her hand. ‘ 

‘That right. You go home like nice girl,’ said 
Frank. ‘You marry nice big fella.’ And seeing 
that Anna was sobbing blindly into her hand- 
kerchief, he improved the opportunity to make a 
quick but quiet getaway 

‘Ten bones,’ he muttered, when he got safely 
out of sight. ‘Ten bones; but thas all right. No 
good. Too big. Ten bones vera cheep get rid that 
girl,’ 


240 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


There was nothing for Anna to do but to take 
the next train back, and from then on events 
moved rapidly. Her agitated father had informed 
the police of her flight, the shopkeeper had done 
the same. The stockings, which were now on 
Anna’s stout legs, and whose origin she had com- 
pletely forgotten, were easily identified, and, 
before she had wholly recovered her wits, she 
found herself seated in an office trying to remem- 
ber how it all started. 

‘I don’t know why I took ’em, lady,’ she 
moaned miserably. Of course she had taken them 
because she had to have them, and could get them 
in no other way. But that explanation was too 
obvious to make, so she made none. 

‘But, Anna, you cannot afford silk stockings. 
Why don’t you wear cotton ones?’ inquired the 
lady at the desk. 

‘They all laugh,’ sniffed Anna. ‘Once I did, 
and one fella, he sez, ‘‘I met a good girl,” and 
another fella, he says, ‘‘How did ya know she 
wuz so good?” and the other fella, that’s the first 
fella, he sez, ‘‘Because she wears cotton stock- 
ings.” And everybody laughed. The girls laughed 
too, and that put shame on me.’ 

‘Wearing cotton stockings is nothing to be 
ashamed of,’ moralized the lady. ‘Your mother 


SILK STOCKINGS 241 


got along without silk ones because she couldn’t 
afford them. And you can’t afford them, and 
probably your husband won’t be able to,’ she 
added severely. 

Anna’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I won’t never geé 
a husband if I don’t wear ’em,’ she groaned. ‘My 
mother didn’t wear silk stockings because she was 
a foreigner. But I’m an American,’ she declared 
stoutly, ‘and Americans wear silk stockings.’ 

As she said this, she gazed into the outer office 
where three stenographers, one switchboard girl, 
one policewoman, one probation officer, and two 
girls looking for jobs were seated, and where one 
office supervisor and one typewriter agent were 
standing by the table in conversation. Five pairs 
of ankles were encased in faultless white silk, 
two in black, onein gray, one in light tan, and the 
agent’s trousers were pulled up to display a fancy 
weave of heavy silk check. The only cotton legs 
in sight were attached to an elderly German 
woman, who, with muttered grunts, was washing 
the windows. 

‘All Americans don’t wear them — at least it 
isn’t necessary that they should, anyhow,’ added 
the mentor rather weakly. As she said it she 
curled her own ankles out of sight on the rung of 
her chair. 


242 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


‘Well, Anna,’ she continued desperately after 
a pause, during which her gaze wandered to 
Anna’s smooth stolen hose, already straining 
every thread and tapering so heroically into her 
tight slippers. ‘You’ve got to earn more money, 
that’s plain. You’ve lost your old position, but 
since this is your first offense the store won’t 
prosecute, although, of course, you have got to 
pay for the stockings. We’ll see if we can’t get 
you a better job’ — and she turned to the tele- 
phone. 

‘Maybe we could place her,’ said a pleasant 
voice at the other end of the wire. ‘But I can’t 
see her to-day. Too busy. We’re having special 
counter displays, and selling talks, to attract 
customers. Drop in and see our new line of fancy 
summer hosiery. It’s going big. There may bea 
place for your girl at the silk hose counter, espe- 
cially if she is attractive and quick.’ 

The lady at the desk made no answer to this, 
but hung up the receiver with a sigh. The inter- 
view suddenly embarrassed her and she rose, 
telling Anna to come in to-morrow. ‘Maybe we 
can get you a nice housework job, where you can 
save more money and won’t need to spend so 
much on clothes,’ she said brightly. ‘But where- 
ever you go, you know you mustn’t ever steal silk 


SILK STOCKINGS 243 


stockings again or steal anything else. You 
understand that, don’t you?’ she asked, with a 
gaze slightly averted from Anna’s pitiful finery, 
already wearing out before it was paid for. 

Anna turned toward the outer room in which 
her heavy eyes could see nothing but the sheen 
of twenty smooth, shiny ankles, twenty mystic 
marks of one hundred per cent Americanism, 
twenty symbols, indispensable yet unobtainable, 
of a happy citizenship toward which her whole 
soul yearned, but from which she felt herself for- 
ever debarred. Their sleek, glistening surfaces 
shone and twinkled on their lucky wearers, but 
only in the fuzzy old German window-washer 
could she see her own future, and the vision 
quenched the very fires of life within her. Her 
destiny —a ‘foreign’ houseworker in cotton 
stockings, like that old woman. 

‘Yes, lady, I understand,’ she assented dully. 





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XIV 
THE FIRST OF MAY 


THE FIRST OF MAY 


The instinctive desire to be with the crowd, which 
is often called the herd instinct, is very strong, 
especially in young people. Human beings are 
essentially gregarious, and the baffling of their 
social instinct results in loneliness, which is one of 
the most acutely poignant and distressing emo- 
tions suffered by human beings, and often be- 
comes insupportable. Under the spur of loneli- 
ness and to rid themselves of it, most people will 
be driven to behavior of which they would be in- 
capable if they had other adequate outlets for 
their social instincts. 


XIV 
SobeEi Ra TOR MAY 


Tue door of a room on the top floor of Mrs. 
Sparks’s rooming-house suddenly opened, and 
four girls, laughing and chattering, dragged them- 
selves in. They automatically glanced at them- 
selves in the glass, powdered their noses, and threw 
themselves on the beds. At least three of them did. 
The fourth had no hat, so was relieved of the 
necessity of taking it off, and had no powder, so 
felt no responsibility toward her nose. Her dress 
was a faded gingham of countrified cut, which she 
experienced no pleasure in looking at, and she felt 
a little shy about throwing herself on the bed in 
a room to which she had only been invited by 
one of the girls who had taken pity on her. So 
Nelly sat down by the window, and leaning on 
the sill looked out dreamily at the wide lemon- 
colored sky, streaked with blue and crimson, in 
which the sun was preparing to make a glorious 
exit. 

It was the first of May, but a warm wave had 
struck the city which was sweltering in mid- 
summer heat. All the girls had been on their feet 


248 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


all day in the five-and-ten-cent store, and they 
were hot and tired. 

‘Gee, it’s warm, ain’t it?’ remarked Emma, 
with her hands under her head and her feet kick- 
ing idly. ‘The store was awful hot. I’m all in.’ 

‘So am I,’ echoed Marie from the other bed. 

‘It’s spring fever,’ remarked Agnes, strolling 
over to the window and regarding herself critically 
in the mirror of her compact box. ‘It’s awful 
catching on an evening like this. It’ll be grand out 
to-night — What’s the matter, Nelly?’ she asked 
the little girl beside her who was staring out at the 
yellow sky. 

‘L bet she’s homesick. I bet she’s longing for 
the buttercups and daisies,’ drawled Emma from 
the bed. 

‘Aw, shut up!’ said Agnes, frowning at her. 
‘Don’t tease the kid. Why wouldn’t she be lone- 
some? — What’s wrong with you?’ she asked 
again, patting Nelly’s shoulder. 

‘Nothing,’ answered Nelly with a start, ‘only 
my feet hurt.’ And she kicked off her slippers, 
showing her shabby stockings with a hole in each 
heel. 

‘Gee, so do mine,’ said Marie, and she kicked 
off her shoes, which were followed by Emma’s 
tossed from her toes in a high curve and barely 


THE FIRST OF MAY 249 


missing the window. There was not a whole pair 
of stockings among the four. ‘I’ll show you what 
hurts worse than my feet,’ announced Emma 
suddenly, and she pulled herself up to exhibit 
some bruises on her shoulder. ‘Bud done that!’ 
she went on meditatively. ‘Bud’s my husband, 
and he beat me up something awful. That’s why 
I left him, and it’s for good this time. No more 
married life for me.” 

There was a brief silence after this announce- 
ment, then Marie ventured —‘He must be an 
awful fella. A good job you left him.’ 

Agnes sniffed slightly, but Emma wagged her 
head, ‘He ought to be behind the bars, that guy.’ 

Hardly were the words out of her mouth when 
a hand-organ broke loudly through the hum of 
street noises coming up from below. It was play- 
ing ‘Silver Threads Among the Gold,’ badly off- 
key, but the spirit of spring was in it, and the 
effect was instantaneous. The two girls who had 
been lying in a limp languor on the bed leaped to 
their feet, and Emma seized Marie around the 
waist — ‘I'll show you the new dip, kiddo,’ she 
cried, foxtrotting with her around the room, and 
smothering Marie’s imploring demand to go easy 
on her only pair of stockings. As they danced, a 
peanut came sailing through the window where 


250 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Nelly sat, and fell on the floor between the 
dancers. 

‘Look and see who’s the fresh gent!’ shouted 
Emma. 

‘I don’t wantta,’ said Nelly, drawing shyly 
back, as a second peanut hit her head and fell at 
their feet. 

‘For Pete sake!’ cried Emma, ‘I'll show them 
who’s in the monkey house, I’m not shy.’ And 
still dancing, she picked up her slipper and hurled 
it out of the window, where its descent was 
greeted by cheers. 

As the third peanut appeared, however, she 
pushed Marie from her and ran to the window, 
leaning out over the sill. 

‘Oh,’ she called, letting out her breath slowly, 
as she saw who was below. ‘Oh, you don’t say! 
Well, I should say not. You’ve sure got your 
nerve,’ and she drew in her head. ‘It’s Bud,’ she 
announced dramatically. “He wants me to go to 
Luna to a prize dance. He’s got another guy with 
him. Wantta go, Marie?’ 

‘I thought you was off Bud. I thought you had 
filed your papers,’ remarked Agnes. 

‘Well, I have,’ answered Emma, hastily prink- 
ing. ‘But it’s a swell night, and there’s nothing 
to do if I stay here.’ 


THE FIRST OF MAY 251 


‘I don’t suppose we’d oughtta go,’ remarked 
Marie doubtfully, also applying her rouge and 
lipstick. 

‘How bad do you want us?’ giggled Emma out 
of the window. ‘You gotta throw my kick up. 
I ain’t no barefoot dancer,’ and she fell back 
laughing loudly, as her slipper flew up and past 
her onto the floor. 

‘Sorry to leave you behind, Nelly,’ apologized 
Emma, ‘but I’d go crazy if I didn’t go some- 
wheres. Agnes has a sweetie, so she should worry,’ 
and she dragged Marie after her out of the room, 
dancing as she went. 

The two remaining girls rushed to the window 
and waved them off. Then each sank back against 
her own window-sill, and drank in the beauty of 
the evening. Children were playing ball in the 
street below. Girls with their sweethearts were 
beginning to saunter dreamily by. The hand- 
organ with its discordant gayety was reaping its 
harvest of pennies in the monkey’s cap. Men in 
their shirt-sleeves and women in fresh aprons 
lounged silent on their doorsteps, or exchanged 
good-natured trivialities with their neighbors. 
And over all brooded the warm yellow sky with 
its saffron streamers, its radiance reflected from 
each western window, and for one enchanted hour 


252 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


drenching the dingy street with poetry and ro- 
mance. 

‘She’s a crazy kid, that Emma,’ remarked 
Agnes idly. ‘She’s filed papers three times on that 
fella — but she always goes back. Nothing else 
to do on an evening like this, I guess. Don’t know 
as I blame her. Say, kid, want anything to eat, 
there’s some corn over there if you can find the 
can-opener. It must be around somewhere.’ 

‘I ain’t hungry,’ answered Nelly, leaning her 
head back. 

‘Me neither,’ agreed Agnes, ‘but I thought a 
pickle would taste good,’ and she reached around 
for a paper bag off the bed, and passed it to Nelly. 
‘It’s dill,’ she urged. 

‘Tastes like spring, don’t it?’ said Nelly, and 
each girl nibbling at a large pickle continued to 
gaze, one at the scene below, the other at the sky. 

Suddenly Agnes leaned out — waved a greet- 
ing, and whispered to Nelly — ‘Quick! See that 
guy over there?’ 

Nelly gazed about vaguely — ‘No, I don’t see 
who you mean.’ 

‘Too late,’ answered Agnes, leaning back. 
‘You looked the wrong way. He went around the 
corner. That was Slim Mackie. I heard he got 
the Pen. I sure was surprised to see Slim.’ 


THE FIRST OF MAY 253 


‘What’s the matter with him? What did he 
do?’ inquired Nelly, without much interest. 

A distant clock struck seven and Agnes rose 
and began to arrange her hair and dress. ‘Oh, 
I don’t know, I heard he peddled dope. I used to 
like that guy, but he got too rough for me. One 
time a gang of us was out in his car, or we thought 
it was, but it turned out he’d stole it, and the cops 
chased us, and he parked in an alley and we run 
into a Chink laundry. And Slim he hid under the 
wash. And when the cop came in, the old Chink 
could only say, ‘‘Me no sabe. Me no sabe.” 
They said he and Slim had some dope deal on, and 
that’s why he hid him. They said it wasn’t the 
first time Slim had had to hide. It’s too bad. I 
kindda liked Slim.’ 

‘How could you like a fella like that?’ asked 
Nelly curiously. 

‘Oh, he’s Irish, and they flash a wicked smile. 
Even old Spark-Plug here got a case on him. He 
got her number. He could work her for anything. 
—-Say, kiddo,’ Agnes went on, manicuring her 
nails studiously, ‘I’m sorry to leave you to-night, 
but I got a date with Jim, and I'll have to be going 
pretty soon. I wish you could come, but maybe 
you wouldn’t like it, and anyhow you’d oughtta go 
to bed.’ 


254 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Nelly’s face fell, but she said nothing except 
‘I wisht I was home. They’re hanging May 
baskets there to-night.” ‘May baskets — what 
are they?’ asked Agnes with the polite tolerance 
of the city-bred for rustic sports. 

‘Oh, you pick flowers, and then hang bunches of 
‘em on people’s doors. You ring, and then you 
run. It’s fun ringing doorbells after dark in the 
spring.’ 

‘Sounds kindda silly, don’t it?’ remarked 
Agnes, thinking it over. 

‘It don’t seem silly,’ explained Nelly eagerly. 
‘Lotsa older kids do it. People like the flowers 
except the old crabs, and you throw cabbages at 
their doors.’ She giggled slightly at the memory. 

‘The cops would chase you if you tried that 
around here,’ commented Agnes dryly. Then, 
after reflecting a moment, ‘Say, Nelly,’ she re- 
marked, ‘I wish you’d carry these lily bulbs over 
to Miss Babcox. She’s crazy to get them. She 
keeps asking me all the time. I said there was 
some left at the store and I’d bring them. Go on 
over, Nelly, there’s a good kid. I ain’t got the 
time.’ 

Nelly looked a little blank at this request, but 
she obediently drew on her slippers with a sigh, 
and took the bag. 


THE FIRST OF MAY 255 


‘Do you like the new shade, or is it too yellow?’ 
asked Agnes exhibiting her cheek, with a flaming 
blush of rouge on it which almost outdid the sun- 
set. 

‘No. You look swell,’ sighed Nelly. ‘I wisht I 
was going somewheres.’ 

‘You go to bed,’ said Agnes kissing her im- 
pulsively. ‘Tl take you out sometime to a swell 
show, but I can’t to-night. I got a date,’ and she 
helped Nelly on her way out of the door with a 
slight shove. 

Hardly had she gone when there was a knock, 
and Mrs. Sparks, the stout, untidy, and rather 
unscrupulous-looking landlady stood in the door- 
way. 

‘Your fella wants to come up, Agnes,’ she said, 
‘but I told him you said to wait.’ 

Without pausing for his summons, however, Jim 
brushed past her into the room. ‘What’s the big 
idea, Aggie? Got another fella in here?’ he in- 
quired facetiously, as he peered under the bed and 
behind the screen on which the girls’ clothes were 
hung. 

This pleasantry was greeted by a loud laugh 
from Mrs. Sparks. *Ain’t you comical?’ she ejacu- 
lated, her sides heaving. ‘What do you think we 
are?’ 


256 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


‘It’s the kid,’ explained Agnes. ‘I didn’t want 
no argument before her. I gotta borrow a key, 
Sparky, mine’s lost,’ she went on, still prinking 
at the glass. 

Mrs. Sparks stiffened. ‘Now, Agnes,’ she re- 
monstrated, ‘you girls got to show more con- 
sideration, losing your keys and coming in so late. 
It don’t look right. And Emma yelling out the 
window like she does. It makes talk.’ 

‘Aw, don’t make me laugh,’ snarled Jim, shov- 
ing a bill into her hand from which he extracted 
the key. 

‘Don’t let Nelly get too lonesome, Sparky,’ 
urged Agnes, taking a last comprehensive squint 
at herself in the glass. 

‘Speed up, Aggie. What’s the kid to you?’ 
snapped Jim with the impatience of a man who 
has been kept waiting, and he dragged Agnes 
after him into the hall. 

Mrs. Sparks sat herself heavily in a chair, 
smoothed out the bill, which she contemplated 
with much satisfaction, and looked about the 
room. She rocked and waited. The spring noises, 
the children in the streets, and the lemon-tinted 
sky were not for her. She had her business to 
think of. Presently, Nelly’s step sounded outside. 
She opened the door, sighed a little as she looked 


THE FIRST OF MAY 257 


about, seeing Mrs. Sparks instead of Agnes, but 
said, ‘Good-evening,’ as politely as possible, and 
reseated herself at the window. She started to 
kick off her slippers again, but Mrs. Sparks’s 
voice stopped her. 

‘Nelly,’ she said in a flat, impersonal tone, 
‘there’s a fella downstairs wants to see ya.’ 

‘To see me?’ gasped Nelly incredulously, half 
rising in her chair. 

‘Yes, there’s a fella I had some business with, 
who was going by, and saw you girls sitting in the 
window. He said he had nothing to do this eve- 
ning, and if you was lonesome he would be glad to 
drive you round. It’ll be pretty in the parks to- 
night.’ 

Nelly ran to the mirror, but drew back dis- 
consolately — ‘Gee, I’m a fright,’ she said. “My 
clothes are terrible.’ 

‘Oh, he don’t mind,’ Mrs. Sparks reassured 
her; ‘I said you was from the country, and he said 
he hadn’t seen a real country girl for a long time. 
He said he’d like to meet you. He’d be pleased to 
show you around.’ 

Nelly flushed with pleasure, but pouted. ‘What 
did you say I was from the country for? He'll 
think I’m a regular hick. Is it all right to have him 
up here?’ 


258 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


‘IT don’t know any other place you can have 
him,’ answered Mrs. Sparks dryly. ‘I guess 
he could figure out where you come from without 
my telling him,’ and she hauled herself panting 
from her chair. ‘Come on up!’ she shouted down 
the stairs; and presently the figure of a slender, 
stylishly dressed, sleek-haired young man ap- 
peared in the doorway. 

‘Let me introduce Miss Nelly McQuade,’ 
announced Mrs. Sparks with formal correctness. 
‘And you’ — she hesitated — ‘I didn’t quite get 
your name.’ 

‘Thomas. Mr. Thomas,’ he answered, and 
added politely to Mrs. Sparks, but with a faint 
wink and motion of his head toward the door — 
‘Won't you sit down, Mrs. Sparks?’ 

‘No, I must be going,’ she answered. But she 
gave him a slight poke, as she passed him on the 
way out. 

Mr. Thomas approached Nelly with the blan- 
dishing smile of the professional ‘masher.’ He 
bent toward her, showing all his white teeth — 
‘How about a ride, girlie? You mustn’t sit here all 
alone. You'll be talking to yourself. I’ll show you 
some parks prettier than any country you ever 
saw.’ 

‘I wisht I was in the country right now,’ burst 


THE FIRST OF MAY 259 


out Nelly quickly. ‘The kids are hanging May 
baskets there to-night.’ 

Thomas looked at her, slightly taken aback at 
this response. ‘May baskets! I’d kindda for- 
gotten about May baskets. Where do you come 
from, sister?’ 

‘Oh, a little place you never heard of. East 
Fairville’s the name of it,’ answered Nelly. ‘I 
suppose you never heard of May baskets, either. 
No one has around here.’ 

Thomas had turned suddenly while she was 
speaking, and leaned against the window looking 
out. ‘No, I never heard of ’em,’ he said slowly. 
There was a pause, during which Nelly looked 
shyly at him. Then Thomas broke it with an 
effort. ‘Was it East Fairville, you said? I think I 
met a fella once from down that way. Mackie was 
his name. Ever hear of any family by the name of 
Mackie around there?’ His voice had changed 
from its earlier tone in a manner painfully evident 
to himself, but fortunately imperceptible to Nelly, 
who was too intent upon talking about home to 
notice anything else. 

‘Sure,’ she assented eagerly. ‘There’s Mackies 
there. I’ve heard of a Tom Mackie, who left 
town. I never knew him. That’s probably who it 


’ 


was. 


260 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


‘He said he had a sister. Kindda cute kid he 
said she was,’ went on Thomas slowly, still looking 
out of the window. 

‘That’s probably Mary,’ laughed Nelly de- 
lightedly. ‘I went to school with Mary.’ 

‘You went to school with Mary?’ cried Thomas, 
wheeling around quickly and staring at her. 

‘Sure. She was in my class. I remember talking 
to Mary — must have been about a year ago this 
time, for the lilacs were in bud. The Mackies had 
a big lilac bush right by the gate, and Mary said 
how lonesome she got. There used to be an old 
Mr. Videtto, who ran the band, and we could hear 
him playing his violin alone, way up on House 
Hill. And Mary said how lonesome it was in the 
spring to listen to him. She said she couldn’t 
hardly stand it. Music way off sounds awful lone- 
some in the country.’ 

‘An old wop in my town played like that,’ 
murmured Thomas with a slight shiver, and 
turned again to the window. 

There was a slight pause, and then Nelly added 
meditatively —‘I never saw Mary after that. 
She left town. Ran away with a fella, they said. 
I don’t know. I always liked Mary.’ 

Thomas had given another start, and put his 
hand up to his mouth. Then he turned with a 


THE FIRST OF MAY 261 


nervous jerk, and seated himself on one of the 
beds looking down through his knees to the 
floor. 

‘I suppose no one else could understand why 
old Videtto’s fiddle on House Hill in the spring 
could drive a kid outta town,’ he said slowly, half 
to himself. ‘But I can understand it. I’m not 
sure, now you speak of it, that it didn’t drive me 
Otte 

‘Drive you out?’ said Nelly, startled. ‘Did you 
know Videtto?’ 

‘No, I didn’t know him, but we had an old wop 
just like him. — Say, kid, when you going back?’ 
he asked, suddenly looking up. 

‘I ain’t going back,’ answered Nelly with a 
slight pout, as one who had listened to such a 
question before. ‘It’s too lonesome, and, be- 
sides, I gotta earn some money and get some 
clothes. My clothes are terrible. I just gotta get 
some new ones,’ and she looked ruefully down at 
her grubby little gingham. 

‘Oh, your clothes are all right. Why don’t you 
go home and teach school, or work in the post- 
office, or something?’ he inquired somewhat 
vaguely. ‘You’re lonesome here to-night. You 
said you wished you were back home.’ 

‘I’m lonesome to-night, but I ain’t always going 


262 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


to be. Agnes is going to take me out. She said she 
would. She’s going to teach me to dance as soon 
as I get some clothes. I just can’t stand it at home, 
sitting in the evenings and listening, and not doing 
anything.’ 

‘Old Videtto will stop playing sometime,’ 
commented Thomas. 

‘What if he does? Then it will just be the frogs 
croaking down in Duck Pond all night, and frogs 
are just as lonesome as music. They make you 
feel about the same,’ answered Nelly with a rueful 
little laugh, which Thomas echoed shortly. 

He, too, had heard the frogs and the fiddle 
through the long summer evenings. In fact, in 
the silence he almost heard them now. But an 
abrupt knock broke in on their memories. 

‘That’s probably Miss Babcox after her bulbs,’ 
said Nelly, rising. ‘I took them to her, but she 
wasn’t in, so I told some kids to tell her that I had 
em.’ 

Thomas rose hastily to his feet, and, with the 
promptitude of long practice, headed for the 
screen. ‘No use her seeing me here,’ he explained; 
‘the scarcer the fewer’ — with which cryptic say- 
ing he disappeared and Nelly opened the door 
politely to an elderly school-teacher, who, with 
many words and much fussy peering about, took 


THE FIRST OF MAY 263 


her bulbs. She offered payment; she was grateful: 
she looked for little stones to prop her bulbs in a 
dish; she could not find them; she peered about 
perilously near the screen; she felt that the stones 
must be in the bag; she found positively that they 
were not — and so on, and so on, until Nelly, with 
many promises to secure little stones for her at the 
five-and-ten, shoved her gently out of the door, 
and sat down breathless on the bed. 

‘She’s a real nice lady,’ she explained to 
Thomas, who emerged grunting from his shelter. 

‘Why don’t you live with her then?’ he in- 
quired. “She’s a nut, of course, but she’s all right.’ 

‘Sure, she’s all right,’ agreed Nelly with a sigh. 
‘She’s been to Normal and knows a lot — too 
much for me, I guess.’ 

‘She learned a lot about gardening I’ll say, 
burying bulbs in stones — what does the old lady 
think she’s going to hatch?’ and he minced about 
peering in the corners, while Nelly tittered ap- 
preciatively. 

‘They’re lily bulbs,’ she said. ‘You stick ’em in 
stones and water, and they grow up real pretty. 
Smell a little like lilacs. We used to have some in 
school ourselves.’ 

‘Oh, that’s right. The Chinks sell ’em,’ an- 
swered Thomas. ‘I got mixed up with a Chink in 


264 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


a laundry once. I was fooling with some fellas 
I knew, and the old boy hid me under the wash. 
I remember seeing those things lying around. 
Funny old Chink. Couldn't say anything but 
“Meno sabe. Meno sabe.’ And with his hands 
folded in front and his head on one side, Thomas 
mimicked the old Chinaman, totally oblivious of 
the fact that Nelly had risen in alarmed amaze- 
ment and was staring at him with paling cheeks. 

‘You’re Slim Mackie,’ she whispered, slowly 
backing away from him. ‘And you steal cars and 
sell dope, and have just got out of the Pen.’ 

Mackie turned as if he had been struck, and 
faced her. Then, seeing the genuine horror in her 
face, he turned back, looked on the ground, and 
murmured cynically — ‘Aside from that I’m all 
right, eh?’ 

‘And your name ain’t Thomas — it’s Mackie — 
unless’ — the light breaking — ‘you’re*Thomas 
Mackie, Mary’s brother from East Fairville?’ 
He answered nothing to this, and, still staring, she 
marveled, ‘I never supposed that any one from 
East Fairville could be so bad. So you lived down 
on the Flats next to the Beldens. Say, you knew 
their house burned down, didn’t you?’ she asked 
eagerly, for the moment forgetting to whom she 
spoke. 


THE FIRST OF MAY 265 


‘No. Did our house catch?’ he gasped back, 
also forgetting. 

‘No. Only the shed by the snow-apple tree.’ 

‘I hope it didn’t hurt that tree. Those were 
swell apples.’ 

‘The best I ever tasted. No, they saved the 
tree, every one was so crazy about those apples. 
And Dave — you remember Dave?’ 

Mackie nodded. 

‘Well, something awful funny happened about 
Dave. They had a pig, and the pig got loose, and 
Dave —’ 

But in the midst of her eagerness her voice 
trailed off and stopped. Suddenly both became 
aware that she was not speaking to an East Fair- 
ville neighbor, but to a city thief and dope-seller, 
recently released from prison. Both sat down in 
silence on opposite beds, staring at the floor. 

‘I wonder where Mary is,’ murmured Mackie, 
poking the rug with his foot, and rattling his keys 
in his nervous fingers. ‘Same fix you are, likely, 
only worse.’ 

‘How did you get to be so bad?’ implored 
Nelly when the silence was too ominous to be 
borne. 

‘Got in the wrong crowd when I struck town, 
just like you have. I don’t want to say anything 


266 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


against your friends, and all that, but how did 
they know all about me if they weren’t in the same 
gang? Stick around them and see where you'll be 
by Christmas. You’ll be running to any sheik 
that whistles. You ought to go home.’ 

At this point there was one of Mrs. Sparks’s 
loud knocks, and in response to Nelly’s ‘Come in,’ 
the landlady appeared in the doorway. 

She glanced curiously at the two silent oc- 
cupants of the room, both of whom seemed to be 
taking their pleasures so sadly. 

‘You homesick, too?’ she laughed to Mackie. 
‘I don’t wantta interfere, but the kids are fooling 
with your car, and may hurt it. I thought maybe 
you’d better go if you was going. But I don’t 
wantta interfere.’ 

‘Interfere! You? You wouldn’t interfere with 
murder,’ snapped Mackie angrily, as the landlady 
waddled in confusion from the room. He rose to 
his feet uncertainly and took out his watch. ‘I 
gotta go, Nelly. I’m leaving town right away,’ 
he said, reaching for his hat. 

‘Gotta go?’ cried Nelly, almost in tears. ‘Don’t 
go yet,’ and she ran to the window impulsively 
looking out. 

She did not know what she wanted. She had 
nothing to suggest. She just knew that to stay 


THE FIRST OF MAY 267 


alone in that unwholesome room with all the 
world of spring and beauty calling her outside 
was more than she could bear. The prospect of 
many more such evenings was heart-breaking. 
Mackie stood beside her for a moment looking out 
on the crescent moon in a paling sky, and as he 
stood, the hand-organ which had moved on to a 
more distant street, broke waveringly in across 
the silence. 

Mackie put his arm around her and his cheek 
against hers. ‘Old Videtto’s playing on House 
Hill, eh, kiddo?’ he whispered in her ear. 

Nelly whirled around and clutched his arm. 

‘Oh, don’t go! I'll go somewhere with you. I 
don’t care how bad you’ve been. I can’t bear it 
here being so lonesome,’ she sobbed. ‘ Ain’t you 
never going to take me no place?’ she sobbed 
as the young man hesitated. 

Mackie dragged himself away almost roughly 
and started for the door. “Not while they’re 
hanging May baskets on old lady Belden’s door 
and the snow-apple tree’s in bud,’ he answered 
half to himself. Then he turned back suddenly 
and drew a tight wad of bills from his pocket, 
thrusting it into Nelly’s hand. ‘Take it, Nelly,’ 
he urged. ‘You'll need it. You buya ticket home,’ 
and again he made for the door. 


268 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS’ 


But Nelly followed him. ‘Oh,-I can’t take it!’ 
she cried, trying ineffectually to force the money 
into his hands. ‘Take it back! I can’t take it!’ 

For one moment Mackie turned, caught her in 
his arms, and pressed her closely to him. ‘Take 
it, little sister,’ he whispered; ‘I’m not giving it 
to you. I’m giving it — to — Mary.’ 

He turned quickly and the door slammed be- 
hind him. Nelly ran to the window, the discarded 
bills falling on the floor, and leaned far out. But 
his car was on another street. She could not see 
him. He was gone. The colors faded slowly from 
the sky. The hand-organ played its gay and 
wistful tunes on a still more distant street. The 
girls with their sweethearts sauntered, idly laugh- 
ing, through the twilight. But Nelly, her head 
buried in her arms and her shoulders shaking 
with sobs, was left — alone. 


XV 
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING 


THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING 


‘Mores’ is the term applied by social psycholo- 
gists to the habits or folkways of any group. It 
includes the morals and customs adopted by any 
individual as a member of the society into which 
he is born, and which he accepts as a matter of 
course from his surroundings. The lax moral 
standards and ideals of family life, which are the 
mores of certain classes, are accepted by the 
younger members of the group as uncritically as 
the stricter standards of a more conventional so- 
ciety are accepted by its members. When these 
lax morals conflict with the higher ideals of a soci- 
ety in whose ethics they have not been trained, 
the strain of adjustment is always difficult, and 
sometimes impossible. 


XV 
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING 


To any who might be disposed to criticize the 
casual manner in which Amy and Josephine lived 
their lives, it is only fair to explain that their 
mother had decided soon after their birth that 
she preferred the company of her star boarder to 
her husband and had eloped, leaving the two 
babies to their father’s rather ineffectual care. 
He also very soon found that he had made a mis- 
take in the choice of his second wife, and this lady 
found herself one day in sole charge of the two 
children who constituted the only legacy left her 
by her departing mate. When she in turn married 
again, the bond with the two little girls had be- 
come so remote that her new husband might be 
pardoned for declining to accept any responsibil- 
ity for the children of the first wife of his wife’s 
first husband. So Amy and Josephine drifted 
from neighbors and orphanages to factories and 
rooming-houses, their lives still further compli- 
cated by Amy’s baby — the reminder of some 
half-forgotten tipsy joy-rides when she was only 
fifteen. The two girls had worked together in the 


272 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Acme Paper Mill, and the baby had got along 
with what attention it could manage to extract 
from the rooming-house where they lodged. 

The sisters were now seventeen and eighteen 
respectively. Their temperaments were very 
different, as were their looks, although both pos- 
sessed as their only inheritance from their parents 
that rather dubious gift— the gift of beauty. 
Josephine was reticent and statuesque with shin- 
ing red hair and the stubbornness that often goes 
with it. Amy was small and gay and talkative, 
and neither her temperament nor her physique 
fitted her for the long hours of physical labor 
which was all she was trained to do. Indeed, Amy 
seemed so entirely unfitted for the work she was 
doing in the paper mill, that Larry, a handsome 
young teamster in the neighborhood, had offered 
her a share in his modest apartment. ‘I can’t 
marry you yet, girlie,’ he said; ‘I got a wife down 
Texas way somewheres, but if you want some 
place to take care of the kid, and don’t mind do- 
ing a little housework, you can make a home for 
all three of us.’ 

So Amy, much to her delight, found herself re- 
lieved from factory hours, the mistress of a room 
and a kitchenette; and to the three were often 
added a fourth in the person of Josephine, who 


THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING) 273 


had a room elsewhere, but who was fond of drop- 
ping in of an evening. It was a great relief to 
Amy to be freed from the work in the mill, even 
though she did not like housework much better. 
In fact, it must be confessed that Amy didn’t like 
any kind of work. She had no sentimental atti- 
tude toward the dignity of labor. She frankly 
loved to do nothing — to lie with a bag of candy 
and read the movie magazines, only bestirring 
herself when she was obliged to make a selec- 
tion from the delicatessen for Larry’s evening 
meal. To open a can of beans and fry a pork chop 
for him was about all that Larry asked of her, and 
he was not even exacting about the punctuality 
of this repast, which was fortunate, since Amy 
seldom got started on her preparations for supper 
until his foot was on the stair. 

The reason for his patience in this regard was 
his abject devotion to his evening paper. Every 
night as he started home he bought his paper on 
the corner, climbed his stairs with anticipation, 
and settled into his rocking-chair with a sigh of 
content. His shoes came off, his feet were on the 
radiator, and as he slowly and conscientiously 
absorbed every event on the sporting pages and 
the comic strips, he asked nothing of the world but 
to be let alone. Surely a small thing to ask, but 


274. OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


it was more than Amy could supply. Amy had 
by evening exhausted all her candy and all her 
picture magazines, and she wanted to talk. She 
was affectionate and wanted to be petted. Many 
an evening Josephine had watched the scenes 
between the two with a growing concern. 

‘Leave the guy be,’ she would whisper to Amy 
when she was teasing Larry for a kiss or trying to 
sit on his lap, and prevent his reading his paper. 
‘Just leave him be. There’s many a woman 
would be glad to see her man in no worse mischief 
than reading his paper.’ 

‘He ain’t my man,’ whimpered Amy. 

‘All the more reason to leave him in peace 
until he is,’ advised Josephine dryly. 

‘Well, why can’t he talk to me?’ Amy would 
complain. ‘I been alone all day and I’m lone- 
some.’ 

‘Why not go back to the mill if you're so crazy 
for a crowd?’ Josephine would inquire sardoni- 
cally, well knowing Amy’s dislike of work. 

Sometimes she would succeed in dragging Amy 
away from her undemonstrative lover, but some- 
times she would not succeed. And in the midst of 
Larry’s angry but ineffectual requests to be let 
alone, Josephine would steal away to the room of 
Mrs. Murphy who kept the rooming-house, and 


THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING) 275 


deplore Amy’s lack of judgment. ‘If she’d only 
stop jawing the guy till she’s got the right to jaw. 
When he’s got the divorce and she’s got the ring, 
then it’s time enough to give him the rough stuff,’ 
confided the anxious elder sister. 

‘That’s right,’ agreed Mrs. Murphy rocking 
comfortably. ‘You have to talk to get ’em and 
shut up to keep ’em. Many’s the girl I’ve said 
that to, but there’s some can’t learn that lesson.’ 

One March evening matters came to a crisis 
between Larry and Amy, and as usual the news- 
paper was the cause. Larry had settled himself for 
a particularly delicious hour with his sporting 
pages. He had been driving his truck all day in 
the rain, and was in a mood to appreciate a good 
dinner, a warm radiator, and the story, round by 
round, of a prize fight on which he had both bet 
and won. He fairly oozed anticipation as he 
settled himself in his shirt-sleeves for his study of 
the fight. To try to snatch this pleasure from him 
was about as unwise as to attempt to snatch a 
bone from a famished dog just as his teeth have 
settled into it. But this was just what Amy had 
determined to do, and unfortunately Josephine 
did not happen to be there to stop her. Amy had 
stayed indoors all day on account of a fretful 
baby and the rain. She had not even made her 


276 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


usual pilgrimage to the delicatessen. She had 
decided that they would eat at a restaurant and 
that Larry should then take her to a dance. To 
this end she seated herself on the arm of Larry’s 
chair and began to tease him. In vain he tried to 
look over her head at the story of the battle. She 
put her hands over his eyes. He pushed her to 
one side. She pouted that he did not love her. 
He pushed her to the other side. She snatched the 
paper. He tried to get it back, and in the scuffle 
he pushed her to the floor. At this she began to 
cry, still holding on to the paper on which she 
sat. Larry, now thoroughly exasperated, twisted 
her arm in order to recover his beloved pages. 

‘Go get the dinner before I get mad,’ he or- 
dered. 

‘We're going to eat out,’ sobbed Amy loudly, 
‘and then you got to take me to the exhibition 
dance at Luna.’ 

‘Take you nowhere,’ roared Larry; ‘you get 
my dinner or you go out and earn your own.’ 

‘You couldn’t say that to me if we was mar- 
ried!’ screamed Amy. 

‘That’s one good reason why we never will 
be,’ answered Larry savagely, and he began with 
no more ado to put on his coat, pull his clothes 
from the closet, and stuff them into a suitcase. 


THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING , 277 


Amy stared at him aghast. Never for a mo- 
ment had she thought that he would really leave 
her, although he had often threatened to. Like 
most girls of her type she had a childish vanity 
which made it hard for her to realize that any one 
could really tire of her. Even then, if she had 
shown some disposition to get Larry’s meal and 
make him comfortable, above all, if she had kept 
quiet, she might have kept him, and eventually 
married him. He still longed to read his paper by 
the warm radiator and he had no hankering to 
face the rain again so soon. But Amy was pos- 
sessed by the very demon of perversity. She had 
never learned to control her feelings and had no 
idea how to begin. She sobbed and clung to him, 
though he pushed her off again and again. She 
demanded that he marry her with an angry in- 
sistence that made marriage seem to him the 
least desirable thing in the world, and as a last 
straw she snatched back her rival — the news- 
paper — and tore it into shreds. This was too 
much for Larry. He snapped the suitcase to- 
gether and started for the hall. 

‘You going to leave me?’ gasped Amy. 

‘You bet your life lam!’ shouted Larry from the 
door. ‘I didn’t ask much from you but some grub, 
and a little quiet, and you won’t give me either. 


278 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


I’m not marrying again till I find a woman who 
will,’ with which statement he threw some bills 
at her, and slammed the door behind him. 

There was nothing for Amy to do but to lie on 
the floor and sob, which was where Josephine and 
Mrs. Murphy found her when they came to call, 
and to collect the weekly rent, respectively. 
Between them they helped Amy up from the floor 
and calmed her down, considerately asking no 
questions. In fact it was quite unnecessary to 
ask any. It required no Sherlock Holmes to de- 
duce what had happened, especially as Mrs. 
Murphy’s hearing was excellent, and she had 
rather made it her business to keep track, from 
the hall, of how the family affairs were going on. 
‘Rent money must come from some one, quarrels 
or no quarrels,’ as she often remarked. ‘It pays 
to know how the land lays.’ 

‘I suppose you'll be looking for your old job at 
the mill again, and I might as well move my things 
over,’ volunteered Josephine after a decent inter- 
val — ‘that is, if you don’t think he is coming 
back.’ 

‘He won’t come back,’ sobbed Amy with con- 
viction. ‘He’s crazy about them baseball players. 
I bet he’s gone South to watch ’em train.’ 

‘Well, well,’ sympathized Mrs. Murphy. ‘The 


THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING 279 


fellas are likely to get restless about this time o’ 
year. I always noticed it. Murphy would begin 
to get his things together along in March.’ 

~ “Did he come back?’ asked Josephine. 

“Not the last time he didn’t,’ answered Mrs. 
Murphy dryly. 

‘Well, this is Larry’s last time,’ asserted Amy 
with a flash of insight, as she wiped her eyes. 

And being three women who had faced trouble 
before, and had somehow worried through, they 
accepted the inevitable, and arranged that Amy 
should go back to her power machine, that 
Josephine and Amy should keep the room to- 
gether, and that Mrs. Murphy should look after 
the baby for a consideration. 

‘Some one ought to pinch that guy,’ sympathized 
Mrs. Murphy. ‘But, after all, no great harm’s 
done,’ she added soothingly, as she creaked out of 
the room, ‘and you’ve had a good rest.’ 

The lives of the two girls had always been full 
of upheaval and disaster, and the next year was 
destined to be no exception. Although Amy’s 
baby had been a source of great anxiety and ex- 
pense, yet both girls had been devoted to him, 
and when he died of the flu their grief was genuine, 
and the debt they incurred for his forlorn little 
funeral was one which they would be a long time 


280 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


in paying. Then Josephine, who had _ been, 
hitherto, the quieter and more steady of the two 
girls, had completely lost her head and her so- 
briety for a season. She had joined in the diver- 
sions of a reckless crowd from whose revels Amy’s 
greater grief had fortunately restrained her, and 
in less than two -years from Larry’s departure, 
the situation of the two sisters had been reversed. 
Josephine was housed with a little baby at Mrs. 
Murphy’s rooming-house, and Amy, the easy- 
going and pleasure-loving, was her sole support 
from the time she left the hospital until she was 
able to go back to her factory job. The responsi- 
bility had brought out more strength in Amy’s 
character than her friends supposed she had. 

‘Don’t fret,’ she said to Josephine; “I got 
through it, and you can. He’s kindda cute, ain't 
he?’ she added, peering into the bundle which 
the handsome but sulky Josephine was stoically 
rocking — ‘almost as cute as Billy was.’ She 
made no more adverse comments on Josephine’s 
behavior and its consequences than Josephine 
had made on hers. Both of them took the gam- 
bler’s attitude toward life. Both had played, and 
hitherto both had lost. But they were still young, 
and better luck next time. 

Mrs. Murphy, who was kind-hearted despite 


THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING | 281 


the fact that she had no creed in life except that of 
punctually collecting her rent, was accustomed to 
sit with Josephine often in the afternoons to cheer 
her up. The sudden shift from a period of the 
wildest of carousels to solitude in a rooming-house 
with a little baby had completely dazed Joseph- 
ine, and whereas she had a certain stubborn 
pride of character to bring to the rescue, she 
lacked Amy’s ability to rise quickly and blithely 
from misfortune. The two women rocked back and 
forth in the thin December sunshine and waited 
for Amy to come in and tell them news of the 
day. Kind as Amy had been to her sister, her kind- 
ness was not without a certain evident satisfac- 
tion in being for the time sole dictator in the fam- 
ily affairs She knew that Josephine was abso- 
lutely dependent on her, and she enjoyed the 
freedom from her sister’s domination to which 
she had usually submitted. As for the proud 
Josephine, it was not easy for her to sit in silence 
awaiting Amy’s comings and goings and accepting 
her decisions. But without a cent in the world 
and with a four-weeks-old baby, one learns dis- 
cretion, so when Amy sauntered in much later 
than usual, looking very gay and pleased with 
herself, Josephine made no complaints over her 
tardiness, but rocked on, giving her sister but one 


282 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS © 


comprehensive glance, and then looking fixedly 
out of the window. 

“Been Christmas shopping with Mame,’ said 
Amy cheerfully. ‘She got some toys for the kids, 
and I bought a few presents myself.’ She tossed 
her packages on the bed and warmed her hands 
at the radiator, gazing at them critically. 4 

Finally she held up her left hand to her au- 
dience and exhibited a platinum. colored ring upon 
it. ‘I got married to-day,’ she announced. 

‘Yes,’ said Josephine, not to be outdone in 
nonchalance; ‘I noticed you did.’ 

‘You noticed it already? Well, why didn’t you 
say something?’ pouted Amy, still admiring the 
ring. 

‘It’s none of my business unless you make it 
so,’ answered Josephine, shrugging her shoulders. 

As for Mrs. Murphy, she rocked on in silence. 
She would know all in due time. 

Amy leaned against the radiator and gave the 
two other women a sidelong glance. ‘He’s an 
ugly little runt. He’s a wop,’ she finally ventured. 

‘A wop?’ echoed Josephine. There was an in- 
terval of silence, and then her curiosity got the 
better of her. She stopped rocking and stared at 
her sister. ‘If you’re married, where is he?’ she 
asked suspiciously. ‘I’ll bet you’re kidding us.’ 


THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING  ° 283 


‘No, I ain’t. On the level I’m married. He’s 
back in the shop. I told him there was no use 
in wasting a whole afternoon to get married in. 
Besides, I wanted to go shopping with Mame. 
The stores look swell just before Christmas.’ 

‘Some dagoes make good money,’ finally re- 
marked Mrs. Murphy, ‘but they’re usually tight 
with it.’ 

‘Well, that’s all settled,’ answered Amy. ‘He 
takes Josephine and the baby if he takes me, and I 
quit the factory. He’s said that before witnesses. 
His name’s Tony — Tony Firmenti.’ 

‘That’s a hard name to remember,’ commented 
the landlady. 

‘It is at first,’ apologized Amy, ‘but just say to 
yourself — he ain’t spoiled, he’s only fermented, 
and that helps. That’s what I do.’ 

It turned out that Tony was a pastry cook, 
past his first youth, with an eye for beauty which 
Amy satisfied. The affair had not been entered 
upon rashly — that was the amazing part of it. 
For Josephine. under the circumstances, to show 
a calculating disposition would have surprised 
no one, but for the demonstrative and scatter- 
brained Amy to arrange her marriage with an eye 
solely to the main chance showed that, whether 
for good or ill, life had taught her a few lessons., 


284 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


She had met Tony in his own shop, had seen at a 
glance that he had material benefits to offer, and 
had made up her mind that he should offer them 
to her. This the susceptible Tony had cheerfully 
done. It must be said in her defense that neither 
she nor her sister had ever in their lives (outside of 
the movies) witnessed a single happy marriage in 
which love and a fair amount of comfort were 
combined. Their tempestuous lives had vibrated 
between ‘homes,’ domestic friction, and sordid 
romance, and both of them were unconscious 
cynics in the matter. Marriage, like old age, 
seemed from their observation to be an inevitable 
drab ending to the dangerous gayety of youth. 
It would be charming if one could ever hold 
one’s sweetheart, either before or after marriage. 
But since one seldom did, then one must do the 
next best thing, and marry some one else as pain- 
lessly and comfortably as possible. So Amy, after 
some anxious speculation before the glass, as to 
how long her good looks would last, had decided 
that she would better settle down at once, and she 
had also decided that Josephine should settle down 
with her. She gave up romance as a youthful 
dream, and chose instead the substantial status of 
married life, a house, a shop, a middle-aged hus- 
band, and even a mother-in-law. 


THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING _ 285 


‘He’s a Catholic, so I turned,’ she went on. 
‘The Pope lives over there, they say.’ 

‘It’s a good religion,’ nodded Mrs. Murphy. 
‘Murphy was a Catholic, and my first was a Jew. 
Heaven and Hell is full of both, I guess. I’ve had 
all kinds as roomers, and they’re about alike.’ 

‘IT went in a church and saw them do it,’ mused 
Amy. ‘It don’t look hard to do if you get used to 
it. Will you turn Catholic, too, if I get you a good 
man?’ she asked her sister. 

‘I’d try anything once,’ answered Josephine 
with a grim smile. 

‘It’s much harder to learn to cook than to say 
your prayers a new way,’ said Mrs. Murphy 
sagaciously. ‘You ain’t so strong on cooking, 
Amy, as I remember it.’ 

‘Spaghetti and snails is all they eat, I’ve heard,’ 
giggled the bride. ‘Anyhow, Tony’s a cook.’ 

‘They’ll be here any minute— I most forgot,’ 
she said, looking at the clock. Then, standing in 
front of her sister, she added decisively, ‘Jo- 
sephine, your husband was killed in a railroad 
wreck last fall — do you get that? Tony’s bring- 
ing his brother with him for a little party, and we 
got to say something to explain the kid.’ 

‘He must be a dumb-bell if you can fool him 
with that old gag,’ answered Josephine dryly. 


286 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS — 


‘They won’t stand for the kid, wreck or no 
wreck,’ 

‘Yes, they will, they got to,’ said Amy stub- 
bornly. ‘Foreigners like kids and they like red 
hair — you'll get by with Frank all right. That 
sounds like them now,’ and leaning over she 
whispered with, slight embarrassment — ‘Don’t 
laugh when you first see them —they’re not so 
bad even if you can hear their neckties a block 
away. 

‘Some dagoes are swell-looking fellas,’ said Mrs. 
Murphy politely. 

‘Well, Tony ain’t. That’s a cinch,’ returned 
Amy with great positiveness, and at that point 
there was a loud knock on the door and Amy 
opened it to two very short, swarthy Italians, in 
bright blue suits and shiny shoes. Both of them 
carried large bundles and both of their faces 
showed a wide expanse of very white teeth. They 
laid their bundles on the table, and then one, ob- 
viously Tony, put his arm around Amy, and 
beamed on the company. 

‘Ain’t I got the pretty wife?’ he asked. ‘Ain’t 
she pretty enough for two?’ 

Frank and Mrs. Murphy smiled sympatheti- 
cally. ‘Sure she is,’ answered the genial landlady, 
and then seeing that Amy and Josephine, having 


THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING _ 287 


caught each other’s eye, were about to go off into 
a spasm of nervous giggles over the somewhat 
grotesque brothers, she came to the rescue. 
‘Amy, you forgot your manners —ain’t you 
going to introduce us? I’m Mrs. Murphy, and 
pleased to meet you,’ she said, shaking hands. 

Amy made a last effort to pull herself together. 
‘And this is my sister Jo. Her name is Mrs. — 
Wreck — and her husband was wrecked — in a 
wreck.’ 

At this both girls gave up the struggle and 
shook helplessly with hysterical laughter. The 
amiable grooms fortunately were too good- 
natured to mind any hilarity, and laughed loudly 
in sympathy, although they were obviously ig- 
norant of what they were laughing at. 

With Mrs. Murphy’s help they undid the pack- 
ages which disclosed a large frosted cake, some 
bread and sausage, and some soda pop. Then they 
stood back and surveyed the result with some 
pride. 

‘That’s a Christmas party all right, ain’t it?’ 
inquired Tony. ‘Ain’t some one going to drink 
our health now we got married?’ he asked the 
company. He uncorked the bottles and passed 
them around. 

‘Ain’t you going to drink to our health, Jo? 


288 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


Can’t you make a toast?’ asked Amy, but her 
voice trembled, and Josephine was on the verge of 
tears. 

The change in their destinies had been too 
sudden. Half an hour before she was a penniless 
girl alone in a rooming-house, rocking a baby 
whom no one wanted, and too dazed by the pro- 
blem of how to feed it and herself to make one plan. 
Now, by a turn of fortune’s wheel, a dull domestic 
haven stretched in front of her, soon doubtless to 
be shared by Frank or some one like him — 
respectability, monotony, the beginning of safety, 
and the end of romance. Youth was over, and 
middle age had set in. Even Amy’s nerves were 
shaky under the strain, and as for Jo, she had 
recently gone through too great a shock to bear 
much more. She was in no condition to face this 
crisis with any poise, much less with courage or 
good judgment. It was plain that she could not 
even speak. She gazed in front of her as into a 
yawning pit, and the sympathetic Italians, re- 
membering her dead husband, nodded soothingly 
and murmured, ‘Too bad. That’s all right.’ 

Again Mrs. Murphy came to the rescue. ‘Some 
one’s got to drink your health. I’ll do it,’ she said. 
‘Here’s to you two fine fellas. May the second 
wedding follow not long after the first. And 


THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING ~ 289 


here’s to Amy, and Josephine, who’s been through 
a peck of trouble, but who has past them now. 
They’re going to have a Merry Christmas and 
plenty of them. Merry Christmas I say to every- 
body.’ 

‘That’s a swell toast, Mrs. Murphy,’ said Amy, 
her eyes wet. ‘Come on, Jo,’ putting her arm 
around her and drawing her into the circle; ‘ Mrs. 
Murphy’s about right. It ain’t so bad as it looks. 
It might be a lot worse. Our troubles are going to 
end. Tony and Frank are good guys. They Il 
treat us swell. Merry Christmas and Happy New 
Year — everybody.’ 

‘That’s the way to talk,’ said Mrs. Murphy 
comfortably. 

‘Brava! Brava!’ echoed Tony and Frank as 
they drained their glasses. 


at: 


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i a nic itr 


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XVI 
SEVEN P.M. 


SEVEN P.M. 


Fatigue — exhaustion of strength caused by 
excessive exertion. If fatigue is abnormally con- 
tinued, the nervous system goes through a stage 
of heightened sensitivity, when it is affected by 
stimuli which would be relatively unimportant at 
other times. People who are in a continual state 
of overfatigue, and who are unable to recuperate 
by the usual means of quiet, privacy, and change 
of scene, become chronically irritable. 


XVI 
SEVEN P.M. 


Mrs. NYACK stood beside the stove on a hot May 
evening poking the pork chops doubtfully with a 
fork and holding on to her cheek. It was the end 
of a particularly wearing week. The kitchen was 
hot, the other three rooms were hot, and every 
one was late. Mrs. Nyack had been waiting for 
the whole family for over an hour, alternately 
heating up the chops as she thought that she 
heard her husband’s step upon the stairs, then 
turning out the gas again, and applying the oil of 
cloves to her tooth. The later Mr. Nyack and 
Joe arrived, the more likely they were to demand 
their dinner the instant they opened the door. 
Both men did hard manual labor and were furi- 
ously hungry when they came home. They could 
hardly be blamed for wanting their dinner and 
wanting it at once. On the other hand, if their 
arrival varied by an hour, how could they expect 
their meals to be ready on the dot? Both the 
appetite of the men and the inability of Mrs. 
Nyack to appease it instantly at an uncertain 
hour were reasonable. But the Nyacks were sel- 
dom reasonable at six P.M. and never at seven. 


294 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


The first to arrive was May. She worked at a 
box factory, and had her Saturday afternoons off. 
This year for the first time she had spent her 
Saturdays as she saw fit. Until she was sixteen, 
she had given up her holiday to the weekly clean- 
ing of the four rooms of the Nyack apartment. 
This spring she had announced that, since she gave 
seven dollars of her weekly thirteen toward the 
family budget, she would not give her Saturday 
afternoons. ‘You take that or nothing,’ was her 
ultimatum; ‘and if you crab, I’ll leave like Louisa.’ 

This was a serious threat. Louisa was the eld- 
est child and she had worked for three years in a 
printer’s office, Her mother had always insisted 
on taking her entire pay envelope, although 
Louisa had protested bitterly, but in vain. So she 
bided her time. On her eighteenth birthday had 
occurred the great emancipation proclamation in 
the Nyack family. Louisa had removed herself 
and her belongings to a rooming-house, and it 
developed that in this strange country no law 
could force her to come home again. An occa- 
sional bill she gave her mother for old times’ sake, 
and she often paid visits at meal-times — meals 
for which she scrupulously paid. But to come 
back and live with her family, she refused. Since 
May still lived at home, she knew that she owed 


SEVEN P.M. 295 


her family something, but she did not propose to 
have her mother issue back to her at her own 
discretion the money which she had _ herself 
earned. Nor would she allow her mother to spend 
it for her. The Nyack tradition for generations 
had been that children, before their marriage, 
owed all their earnings to their parents. The 
generation now coming on disagreed with this 
precedent, and insisted upon doing as it chose. 
So, although the children and their parents loved 
each other, relations were somewhat strained. 

Now, as it turned out, May had had her Sat- 
urday afternoon, but it had not been successful. 
Bud Bryan, who for three successive Saturdays 
had waited for her on the drug-store corner, in 
order to accompany her to Dreamland Park, had 
not kept his tryst to-day. May had gone to the 
park with a crowd of girls, and on the dance floor 
there was Bud, dancing with the girl who took 
the tickets at the movie theater. This was a 
severe blow. To see her ‘steady’ dancing with an 
overdressed blonde in red shoes took the sunshine 
out of life. In fact, it robbed life itself of any rea- 
son for being. All that May could do, she had 
done. 

She left the park in a rage, and spent five dollars 
for some green King Tut sandals, with green silk 


296 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS » 


stockings to match. She would show Bud whether 
she or the theatrical blonde was the ‘classier’ 
dresser. But when May entered the kitchen 
where Mrs. Nyack’s flushed face shone over the 
frying-pan, she braced herself for the storm. 
Useless to explain to her mother why green san- 
dals were necessary. 

‘You take them things off!’ ordered her mother, 
the moment her impatient eyes fell on May’s feet. 
‘You spending money on fancy truck, and me 
with my teeth, and all!’ she shouted. ‘You take 
them off, I say!’ 

‘If I take them off, I take myself off!’ May 
shouted back. 

‘You crook!’ screamed her mother in exas- 
peration. 

‘Shut your face,’ answered May, in the same 
key. , 

The argument continued in this pitch until the 
door opened and Louisa stepped in. 

‘Any eats to-night?’ she inquired, laying a 
dollar bill ostentatiously upon the table. 

She listened to the last reverberations of May’s 
“shut-ups.’ 

‘Still quarreling, I see,’ she observed with a 
shrug; and then, ‘You can stop your mouths, 
right now, or me and my dollar takes a walk,’ she 


SEVEN P.M. 297 


added, and her hand started toward the bill. Her 
mother’s hand, however, reached it first. 

‘Well, look at them green legs,’ cried Mrs. 
Nyack, ‘and ask why I’m jawing, and me with 
my face aching all the week.’ 

She was almost in tears, but she knew already 
that her case was lost. She saw May glance at 
Louisa and heard her sneer, ‘Better take your 
dollar and ramble, old thing; same old hole.’ 

Their mother knew that if she said another word 
Louisa, and probably May, would both be off. 
Her hand tightened on the dollar. She needed it 
toward the new teeth, and, besides that, Louisa 
was her daughter and she wanted to see her. So 
she gulped down her sobs and the wrath which 
the wanton green slippers aroused in her, and 
turned on the gas again. 

By this time Mr. Nyack was on the threshold 
with his dinner pail. He had wielded a pick in the 
hot sun for nine hours, the perspiration had made 
paths through the dirt on his face, hunger clawed 
at his vitals like a gnawing fox — and here were 
his three women having words with each other, 
and the meat not on the table. 

‘Dry up, you damned women!’ he roared. And 
because of some remnants of fatherly authority, 
or because they thought his advice was sound, 


298 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


they did stop their clamor, and drew up their 
chairs. 

‘You sit down, ma,’ said May, ready to make 
amends, ‘I'll dish it up,’ and she placed the plates 
of chops and potatoes, again reheated over the 
gas, before the family. 

‘Leave some for Joe,’ sighed her mother, ‘and 
give me my coffee. I can’t chew.’ 

She was glad to sit down, even though the 
meals were only an aggravation to her at this 
stage of her dentistry. 

Mrs. Nyack had put off getting her false teeth 
as long as she could, both on account of the ex- 
pense and because she had refused to consider her 
teeth all her life, and she hated to begin. When 
her first child had come home from school, with a 
small card on which was printed — ‘I promise to 
brush my teeth every day,’ and had pinned it over 
the sink, she was mystified. And when the young 
enthusiast proceeded to fly at the inside of her 
mouth with a small brush, the mother was horri- 
fied. She tolerated any such ceremony in her 
kitchen only because she was more in awe of the 
public school teacher than she was of the Pope. 
In every previous encounter with the school 
system she had been worsted, and she knew that 
she would be in this. So she kept silence, but she 


SEVEN P.M. 299 


was utterly unconvinced. As her successive chil- 
dren came home with ridiculous little brushes, 
she accepted the mania only as one more feature 
of an unaccountable country. 

‘They'll be taking a broom to their stummicks 
next,’ she confided to her husband, who was as 
much bewildered by the performance as she. 
Although the parents could not stop their chil- 
dren, both of them resolutely declined to join in 
the obscene rite themselves. Now at forty, Mrs. 
Nyack was parting with her last teeth after weeks 
of torture. Every one lost teeth at forty, as a 
matter of course. That she accepted as part of 
life. But twenty-five dollars for an American set 
was indeed an expense which demanded all the 
help which the children could give. And here were 
ereen shoes, and Louisa ready to walk off with her 
dollar unless her mother kept quiet. She sighed 
heavily over her coffee. All the family contrary, 
and she with only the strength of a week of ‘spoon- 
food’ to help her keep the peace. 

‘I’ve got a new job,’ announced Louisa, amid the 
silence of the dinner table. ‘The printing trade is 
too dirty and no raise in sight. I heard about 
a swell job from a fella who got his printing done 
at our place. It’s pressed-aluminum-household- 
utensils,’ she rattled off all in one word, as in- 


300 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


comprehensible to the rest of them as if she spoke 
in Arabic. ‘TI start in next Monday with the firm 
— canvassing,’ she went on. ‘He says you makea 
lot of money on it too — salary and commission 
on the raffles.’ | 

‘On the raffles?’ asked May. ‘What raffles?’ 

‘The raffles of the pressed-aluminum-household- 
utensils,’ said Louisa. ‘You go to the house and 
get the lady to give you her kitchen. Then you 
give her a meal cooked in the never-burn kettles, 
and then you raffle off the kettles to her after 
she’s eat the dinner. The fella says you make a 
lotta money if you work it right.’ 

‘Sounds good,’ said May. ‘Any chance for me? 
I've got a place to hash at a hot-dog booth myself, 
but this sounds better. I’m tired of the factory,’ 
and she thought of the faithless Bud. It seemed to 
her that never again could she face the girls in 
her section, who had witnessed her discomfiture 
on the Dreamland dance floor. 

Mr. and Mrs. Nyack had not the slightest idea 
of what this talk was about. Aluminum-raffles 
in other people’s kitchens —it meant nothing 
to them. But money was an idea which they 
cguld grasp. 

‘How much more do you make?’ asked Mr. 
Nyack. 


SEVEN P.M. 201 


‘What’s the commission?’ demanded Joe, who 
had just come in. 

‘Who pays for the dinner?’ inquired May. 

‘Who cooks the dinner?’ murmured Mrs. Ny- 
ack faintly. ‘You ain’t much of a cook, Louisa.’ 

And then too late she saw her mistake. Louisa 
rose from the table in wrath. 

‘I didn’t come home to answer questions,’ she 
said angrily. ‘You don’t understand what I tell 
you, so what’s the use of tellin’? I pay my own 
bills, don’t I? Task you for nothing, do I? Doya 
think this dinner was worth the dollar I gave you? 
Can’t I cook as well as this if I have to? Couldn’t 
I have got the same for thirty-five cents down- 
town, and gone to a show beside?’ she asked, her 
voice rising. 

As a matter of fact, she was rather hazy on the 
details of her pressed-aluminum venture herself, 
but she had no idea of letting them guess it. She 
was very proud of her independence and her 
cleverness. She intended to dazzle them with her 
new job, but she had no idea of having it ques- 
tioned. 

May, glad to have attention diverted from her 
green shoes, made no effort to quell the rising 
storm, but Joe, who had been quietly eating his 
dinner, with a mysterious package by his side, felt 


302 OTHER PEOPLE's DAUGHTERS 


that the time had now come to produce it. Joe 
was an odd combination of a working-man and 
asmall boy. He was a heavy good-looking fellow 
of nineteen, but heedless as a child. He was his 
mother’s favorite. He did hauling for a green- 
house which for the last two weeks had been 
plastered with the sign — ‘Say it with flowers to 
Mother on Mothers’ Day.’ This sign had been 
the subject of considerable discussion among the 
men during their lunch hour, and Joe, who was 
really fond of his mother, had had his chivalry 
stirred. He would make his mother a present. He 
had, however, no idea of saying it with flowers. 
To pay good money for flowers is something no 
Nyack would do except for a burial. But there 
was something else he decided to say it with, and, 
unable in his eagerness to wait until the morrow, 
he shoved a large package onto the table, toward 
his mother. Louisa might as well see that she was 
not the only one with big ideas. And as for May 
and her green slippers — his chest swelled to 
think how much more generous he was than she. 
‘Two bucks,’ he murmured in‘an aside to May, 
but his father heard it. 
‘Two bucks?’ he echoed with a puzzled frown. 
As for Mrs. Nyack, she stared at the bundle 
without speaking. It was too large to be teeth, 


SEVEN P.M. 303 


and what else would her children be wasting 
‘two bucks’ on, with that dentist bill to pay? 
As for Mothers’ Day she had never heard of it. 
She was entirely unaccustomed to any sentimental 
attitude toward motherhood, and the gallant de- 
sire in Joe’s breast to ‘say it with something,’ in 
emulation of the well-dressed American men who 
came to the greenhouse, was something she was 
incapable of understanding. She was so tired and 
worried by the vagaries of Louisa and May that 
she felt that she could stand nothing more, but 
she undid the strings doubtfully, and opened 
with caution the two boxes which lay within. 
She raised the lid of one box and then of the other 
and gazed at the contents with stupefaction — 

Caramels. Not one box, but two. _ 

‘Two bucks’ for two boxes of tough chewing 
candy which made her jaws ache to look at, and 
which made her heart sick when she thought of 
the wasted money — Then, instead of her heart 
sinking, her anger rose. Selfish children, all of 
them. Or were they teasing her? Or were they 
going crazy? She rose from the table and thrust 
out her forefinger at Joe. 

‘So you spend your money on muck I can’t eat, 
and call it a present, do you?’ she cried, her color 
rising with her voice. ‘Where is the money you 


304 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 


owe me? Did them boxes cost you two bucks, 
you young liar? You know they didn’t. You 
gambled away your money and stole the boxes, 
you crook. The police will be here next, and me 
always an honest woman,’ she screamed, too worn 
out and hysterical to notice the utterly crest- 
fallen look on her son’s face. 

For a moment he looked as if he would cry 
with disappointment, and Louisa, who had al- 
ways babied Joe more or less, hastily interposed 
— ‘Oh, Ma, shut up,’ she said. ‘That’s on the 
straight. They cost that much. It’s a swell 
present. That’s right, to-morrow is Mothers’ 
Day,’ she added soothingly. 

But Mothers’ Day meant nothing to Mrs. 
Nyack, or to Mr. Nyack either. He turned on 
his son in enraged astonishment. 

‘So you're lifting boxes and gambling away your 
money, are you?’ he shouted, and then he added, 
from sheer nervousness and from long habit, the 
most opprobrious epithet that one man can give 
another. Joe rose to his feet like a cat and picked 
up his chair by the back. The others rose with him. 

Obviously, if Joe was what his father called 
him, it was his mother who was demeaned by 
the epithet. Such an accusation was more than 
speech. It was violence. And from a husband to 


SEVEN P.M. 305 


his son, before his wife — it was almost murder. 
Of course, Mr. Nyack had meant nothing of the 
kind. He and his wife had had their daily quarrels, 
to be sure. But he knew well enough that she 
had been entirely faithful to him and to his in- 
terests. His epithet to his son had been merely 
a manner of speaking. It had slipped out, with 
no reference to its meaning, because Mr. Nyack 
was tired and cross, and his children seemed to 
be smothering him with their outlandish whims. 
But when he saw his two daughters rising from 
the table against him, backed by an hysterical 
wife, and a son ready to throw a chair at him, it 
entirely destroyed what self-restraint he had left 
after so wearing a day. He grasped his own chair 
aloft and threw it blindly. It hit the stovepipe, 
knocking it clear from the wall, and distributing 
the soot over the table and over the heads of the 
three screaming women. 

Joe, his feelings a blind mixture of hurt pride, 
chagrin over his ill-chosen present, his realization 
that his mother could not be made to understand 
his motive, and wild wrath over his father’s un- 
just epithet, flew at his father and pinned him 
to the floor by his throat. He began choking him 
so successfully that Mrs. Nyack, unable to bear 
more, gave a wild shriek and fell unconscious over 


306 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


the table. Louisa and May gave one horrified 
and disgusted glance at each other. Then Louisa 
clawed at Joe’s throat, as the only available spot 
of attack where she could hope to weaken his grip 
on his father, and May, catching a pail of water 
from the kitchen sink, threw it impartially over 
all of them. By this time the clamor had risen to 
such a height that the neighbors were collecting 
outside the door. 

‘Help! Help!’ screamed May, ready to fly into 
hysterics herself, as she saw that the soot and 
water between them had effectually devastated 
the green sandals for all time. 

A crowd of neighbors pushed the door open at 
this cry, and Joe, his ardor somewhat cooled by 
the water and by the presence of the newcomers, 
rose sulkily to his feet. His father, after some pre- 
liminary grunts and snorts, did the same. In the 
shame-faced silence which followed, May elbowed 
her way through the crowd and into the street. 

‘It’s the last night I spend with these devils,’ 
she called back to Louisa. 

She marched out holding her head very high, con- 
scious that the bystanders were tittering slightly 
over the mixture of soot and green dye with 
which she was plastered. She knew a place where 
she could go and fix herself up, and a fellow who 


SEVEN P.M. 307 


would give her some swell shoes. She had been 
shy about taking favors from him before, espe- 
cially since she preferred Bud. But any place but 
home was the way she now felt, and any source for 
shoes since her new ones had been ruined. What 
did anything matter after such humiliation? 

‘I'm through with the damned hole myself,’ 
muttered Joe, as he slouched out of the door in 
the wake of his sister. 

Once in the street he turned in a different direc- 
tion, toward the freight yards. He, too, knew 
where he could go. 

Louisa, being the eldest, felt some slight 
responsibility toward her mother until she at least 
recovered speech, and toward her father until she 
was sure that he would not be arrested. As for 
May or Joe, she knew from her own experience 
that they would take no advice from her, so she 
let them alone. When her parents had both re- 
covered themselves enough to sit up and explain 
matters volubly to the neighbors, Louisa gave a 
slight shrug of disgust at the unclean room sud- 
denly become abhorrent to her, and slipped 
quietly out of the back door. 

The aluminum-kettle raffles did not turn out 
very well. One thing led to another until Louisa 
and the manager of the enterprise were obliged 


308 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


to flee from the State together to escape the law. 
They did not come back. Neither did Joe. He 
sends out-of-the-way postcards to his mother from 
time to time. He seems to be in the navy, but 
his mother is not sure. She has not seen him since 
that night. 

As for May, she calls on her mother now and 
then with very handsome shoes and stockings, 
and she gives her parents a substantial present 
every Christmas. 

They cannot understand where she gets the 
money and they shake their heads over the vague 
accounts which she gives of herself. But what can 
they do? They are glad to get the presents, for 
they need the money, and they are much too 
humbled by their children to dare to ask any 
inconvenient questions. The Battle of Bosworth 
Field was lost to King Richard, they tell us, all for 
the want of a horseshoe nail. The Battle of the 
Nyacks was lost by all parties to the conflict. 
None came out victorious. And why? Because 
all of the combatants were much too tired to be 
reasonable at seven P.M. 


XVII 
JUST LIKE STEVE 


JUST LIKE STEVE 


Education is the sum of the qualities acquired 
through individual instruction and social train- 
ing. All education consists of habit-formation, 
and begins so young that in most cases people 
continue to live according to their earliest nurture 
and ideals. Successful teachers are those who 
capture the admiration of their followers, and who 
teach them when their mental development is 
ripe for their instruction. The fact that their 
teaching may be vicious in no way impairs its 
efficacy. The traditions of anti-social conduct are 
passed on by the same educational technique 
which operates in the soundest training. 


XVII 
JUST LIKE STEVE 


THE brains in the Boushka family came by way of 
Mike, who, with his wife and two children, 
migrated to try his fortunes in the New World. 
But Mike soon succumbed to American industry 
in its tubercular form, taking his brains with 
him, and leaving in the person of his widow 
as ineffective a guardian for Mamie and Nicky 
as ever a man selected for his children. Mrs. 
Boushka’s one flash of good judgment was to 
send for Mike’s old mother, from whom he had 
presumably inherited his ability, and she, patheti- 
cally pleased still to be of use in the world, kept 
the house for the family and two roomers, leaving 
few duties for the younger woman but to sit 
heavily by and collect the room rent. Granny did 
what bringing-up of the children she could in the 
intervals of her housework, but, knowing nothing 
of the language, or of any customs but those of a 
Slavish village, her discipline was not very effec- 
tive, and Mamie and Nicky played in the alleys 
like young outlaws, teasing their heavy-eyed 
mother into fretful scoldings, and dazzling old 


312: OTHER PEOPLES DAUGHTERS 


Granny with their knowledge of the world. It is 
not very good for a girl of fifteen and a boy of 
thirteen to be brought up solely by a lazy mother, 
an overworked grandmother, and a neighborhood 
gang, and the effect of this training on their be- 
havior was about what one would expect. 

It had even penetrated Mrs. Boushka’s sleepy 
intelligence that something had better be done 
with Mamie or she would get them into trouble. 
Boys, she felt, could take care of themselves. 
Mrs. Boushka sat by the kitchen table on which 
were stacked the dishes of the day, ready for 
Mamie to wash when she came home from school. 
Granny crouched on the woodbox resting her old 
bones after collecting kindlings down by the 
packing-houses. 

‘Where are the kids?’ inquired their mother. 
‘School oughtta been out long ago. Mamie 
oughtta be here washing them dishes.’ 

‘She’d rather sit in school reading the books 
than come home and do dirty work. Fine ladies 
don’t like it,’ cackled the old lady. 

‘Sure. That’s what comes of schoolin’,’ agreed 
Mrs. Boushka. ‘Readin’ and writin’. What does 
she read? And what does she write? She’d oughtta 
get married. Kids like Mamie are better off 
married — she’s most sixteen.’ 


JUST LIKE STEVE a1 


Granny agreed with some misgivings. ‘But 
girls don’t want husbands like they used to. A 
husband don’t want a book-reader. He wants a 
cook, and Mamie can’t cook. Mr. Lusky here, he 
likes a good soup.’ 

Mrs. Boushka nodded—‘But he likes Mamie 
too. He’s got a good cigar-store. Mamie could 
sell cigars. What you think, Granny?’ 

Granny paused with still further misgivings, 
and then answered what she knew was the real, 
and not the apparent, question. ‘Girls like the 
young fellas. They don’t like old boys like Lusky. 
I used to like the young fellas.’ She leaned back 
and chuckled in toothless reminiscence. ‘Remem- 
ber young Timothy, him that used to thresh on 
old Nikos’s threshing floor? Timothy’s father 
and grandfather, they were young fellas, those 
fellas were! The girls don’t know what young 
fellas are nowadays. Well! Well! Well!’ she 
clucked to herself, ‘Lusky’s all right,’ — at which 
point the door opened and the stout proprietor of 
the cigar-store, of whom they spoke, entered, sat 
down with his hat on, and his collar off, and asked 
where Mamie was. 

The two women winked at each other. 

“Never too old to love!’ shriecked the old 
lady. 


314. OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


‘Mamie’s a good kid, ain’t she?’ simpered 
Lusky. ‘And I ain’t so old.’ He pushed up his 
sleeve and exhibited his biceps, at which all of 
them laughed loudly, utterly ignoring the appear- 
ance of Steve, the other roomer, who had also 
entered in the meantime and seated himself in 
the remaining chair. His presence was plainly 
not wanted. He was young, on the pattern of 
what is known popularly as a ‘sheik,’ and he and 
his landlady and Lusky exchanged glances of 
mutual disgust. 

‘Sure, Mamie’s a good kid,’ Steve observed, 
joining unasked into the conversation. ‘Too good 
for an old sport like you.’ 

Mrs. Boushka glared at this intruder into her 
plans. ‘You gotta job yet?’ she asked icily. ‘I'll 
need the room rent on Friday.’ 

‘You'll get it, don’t you worry,’ Steve answered 
with a contemptuous gesture. 

‘T don’t know where you get it,’ answered Mrs. 
Boushka, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Mr. Lusky 
here, he’s got a good business. You don’t need 
Mamie in your store, do you?’ she asked, turning 
to Lusky. ‘Mamie’s good in school. She can 
write and figure swell.’ 

‘Sure, I need a smart young kid in the store. 
I was going to ask about Mamie’ — at which 


JUST LIKE STEVE 315 


point the door opened and both children burst in 
shouting with laughter. | 

They danced around the room shrieking with 
excitement, and dragging after them what turned 
out to be chickens on the end of two strings. 
Mamie with a gray chicken capered after Nicky 
with a black one, and the adults stared in un- 
comprehending astonishment as the chickens were 
dragged around the table, till old Granny threw 
up her apron and began to laugh. 

‘Little bandits! I’ve seen them steal geese that 
way in the mountains and get shot for it too. 
Granny’ll make a stew for the little bandits.’ 

Steve, grasping the game, gave an appreciative 
snort, but to Lusky and Mrs. Boushka the matter 
had to be explained. 

‘We didn’t steal ’em,’ said Nicky; ‘we just 
dragged our strings with corn on the end, and it 
ain’t our fault, is it, if they got greedy and swal- 
lowed ’em? You’d oughtta seen them come 
stepping along when they’d swallowed the corn 
and we pulled the strings.’ And the two children 
goose-stepped ludicrously in imitation of the hap- 
less chickens so that even the slow-witted Lusky 
was obliged to laugh. 

‘T’ll put a bay leaf in the stew,’ cackled Granny. 

‘And an onion,’ advised Lusky. 


316 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


“Who asked you to eat our stew? They’re our 
chickens,’ answered Mamie pertly; adding with a 
shy glance, ‘Steve can have some of my chicken.’ 
This under the circumstances was, of course, a 
most unfortunate remark to make. 

Mrs. Boushka leaned over and twitched Mamie’s 
armangrily. ‘You give that chicken to Granny and 
you wash them dishes,’ she snapped. ‘Mamie’s 
a good little housekeeper,’ she explained eagerly, 
turning to Lusky. ‘But girls are silly and need 
some one to handle them.’ 

It was plain enough to her audience whose 
handling she considered would be suitable for 
Mamie. Lusky assumed a self-conscious air, 
Mamie’s color heightened, and she turned her 
back saucily on her elderly admirer as she went 
at the dishes. Steve gave the company a cynical 
glance, and even Granny looked uncomfortable. 
She and her friends had all been married as a 
matter of course at sixteen, and to older men of 
means, instead of young ne’er-do-wells, if sucha 
match could be managed by their elders. She had 
no logical complaint against her daughter-in-law, 
if she pursued the same method which had united 
her to the excellent Mike. Nevertheless, a vague 
presentiment told the old lady, whose feelings 
were fairly acute, that the system would not work 


JUST LIKE STEVE B17 


with Mamie as it had worked with her, and that 
her granddaughter would not relinquish her hold 
upon the Steves of her day, as she herself had 
dutifully bade farewell to the Timothys of her 
own. 

The awkward pause was broken by Steve —‘I 
seen something like that chicken stunt in a show. 
A Rube turn it was.’ 

‘That’s where I seen it,’ giggled Nicky, looking 
doubtfully at his mother. ‘That’s why I tried it.’ 

‘You taking good money to go to shows?’ 
snapped his exasperated mother. 

‘Il didn’t take no money,’ explained Nicky. 
‘T just takes a pillow, and I walks up to the office 
and I says, ‘‘Properties wanted for the stage,” I 
says. And the fella let me in, and then I took the 
pillow up to the front and sat on it and saw the 
show.’ 

Steve burst into a shout of laughter, in which 
the others joined, especially Granny, when it had 
been explained to her. 

She chuckled gayly over her grandson’s clever- 
ness. ‘Granny’s little bandit. Like his father, 
always up to tricks. I wish we had some sauer- 
kraut to go with the chickens,’ she mused on from 
her woodbox, busily picking the feathers from the 
captured fowls as she spoke. 


318 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


‘Tl get you some,’ shouted Nicky, starting up, 
eager for fresh outlets for his energy. 

‘We ain’t got no money for sauerkraut,’ an- 
swered his mother, still out of sorts. 

‘I don’t need no money, and I won’t steal it 
either. I thought up a way,’ returned Nicky, 
rummaging in the cupboard for an old knife as he 
spoke. 3 

Steve looked him over critically and took out a 
silver dollar. ‘I bet you one simoleon you don’t 
get no kraut without paying for it, or without 
getting caught.’ pa 

‘I bet I do!’ shouted Nicky, running out of the 
door with no further interference from his mother. 
The sight of a dollar always exercised a wonder- 
fully quieting effect upon her scruples. 

‘If Nicky’s going somewhere, I’m going, too,’ 
announced Mamie, thoroughly sick of her desul- 
tory dish-washing. ‘I bet he’s going to another 
show, and it ain’t fair, with me washing dishes.’ 

‘Wantta go to a show?’ asked Lusky with 
surprising briskness. ‘I'll take you to a show.’ 

‘I don’t want to go to a show with you,’ re- 
turned Mamie, paying no heed to her mother’s 
darkening looks. ‘I want to dance in a show my- 
self’ — with which remark, she began to dance in 
the midst of the group, waving her dish towel 


JUST LIKE STEVE 319 


like a scarf, and whining, ‘Where’s my sweetie 
hiding?’ through her nose in the best vaudeville 
style. 4 

Both men watched her with interest, and then 
Steve, in defiance of his hostile audience, rose and 
joined her in ‘jazz’ dips and posturing, ignoring 
the jealous and uneasy glances of Mr. Lusky, and 
the angry gaze of Mrs. Boushka, until the latter 
rose from her chair and snatched Mamie away 
from him. 

‘You let go 0’ my kid, teachin’ all this foolish- 
ness and the same to Nicky. You pay your room 
rent, and you get out. You’reno good. Mamie’ll 
be glad to go to a show with you, Mr. Lusky,’ 
she added, somewhat lamely, and, shoving Mamie 
ahead of her with a disgusted push, she left the 
kitchen, slamming the door behind her. Presently 
the wail, ‘Gran—ny! Gran—ny!’ was heard in 
Mamic’s voice from the rear, and old Granny left 
her chicken-picking, and hobbled grunting after 
them to play her usual réle of impartial chairman 
in the Boushka family. 

The two men were now left alone in the kitchen. 
Each sat tilted back in his chair, his hat resting on 
his neck, and stared ahead in surly silence. 

This was finally broken by Lusky, who re- 
marked, ‘ You act flush with your dollars all right.’ 


320 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


To this Steve snapped, ‘What’s it to you?’ 

‘And you don’t work for it neither. I have to 
work for my money,’ Lusky went on. 

‘Selling cigars ain’t work —a kid can do it,’ 
sneered Steve. 

“What you know about it?’ returned Lusky an- 
grily, stung into defense of his business ability. 

‘I know enough to know you don’t get the 
trade,’ answered Steve. ‘Ever thought of trying 
a few poker tables in the back of your place, to 
attract customers?’ 

‘I’m going to get Mamie down in my store. 
She’s a pretty kid. She’ll attract customers,’ was 
Lusky’s flat announcement. 

‘Nicky’d do you more good than Mamie,’ 
answered Steve, jingling his keys reflectively. 
‘Mamie’d get the fellas in the store all right, but 
how d’you know she’d sell’em cigars? A girl don’t 
have to. She can get her shows and her joy-rides 
without selling cigars. Nicky’d go in the business 
and make money for you. Mamie’d make it for 
herself; she wouldn’t be in business for your 
health, and don’t you forget it.’ Lusky stirred a 
bit uneasily at this. ‘Are you thinking of marry- 
ing the kid and giving her the legal right to waste 
your money? No fool like an old fool,’ persisted 
Steve. 


JUST LIKE STEVE 321 


‘None o’ your business who I marry,’ rejoined 
Lusky with a sulky shrug. 

Steve leaned over to him eagerly. ‘See here, 
Lusky. You leave Mamie alone, and I'll help you 
to a thing or two with Nicky. He’s a smart kid. 
Look at what he gets away with. Get him 
trained, and ya got a business man. Get Mamie 
trained, and what ya got?’ 

‘I got Mamie,’ chuckled Lusky with a leer. 

‘No, ya ain’t. Not on your life you ain't got 
Mamie,’ rejoined Steve quickly. ‘Married or un- 
married, you ain’t got Mamie except her upkeep. 
Girls chase around with the young guys, and don’t 
you forget it. An old boy like you would just pay 
her overhead.’ 

‘Well, what’s your idea about Nicky?’ in- 
quired Lusky, reluctant, but uneasy over the 
picture of a young spendthrift wife. 

‘T could teach Nicky a good poker game. They 
learn quick when they’re young. I learned 
younger than him myself,’ explained Steve. 

‘What good’s it done ya if ya did?’ demanded 
Lusky, thinking that he had now made a 
point. 

Steve looked behind him, lit a cigarette with 
elaborate nonchalance, and drew a hard wad of 
bills from his pocket. He smoothed them out, 


322 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


counted them before Lusky’s fascinated eyes, and 
replaced them in his pocket. ‘Fifty berries. Not 
so bad for one evening, eh?’ he commented while 
Lusky continued to stare in a dazzled fashion 
at the pocket where the bills had disappeared. 
‘You’d come in on a percentage basis,’ Steve 
volunteered. ‘I’d teach him, and fix it up with 
you. Nothing phoney about it. Play one jump 
ahead of the other guys, is all you have to do, and 
Nicky could, all right. He’s full of tricks already. 
Hear him laughing out there? I bet his gag 
worked.’ 

At this point Nicky burst into the room shout- 
ing, ‘Granny! Where’s Granny?’ — and as he 
shouted, he waved a carton of sauerkraut in 
the air. His commotion brought the rest of the 
family peering through the door, and Nicky went 
on hilariously: ‘I got the kraut at Tony’s delica- 
tessen, and I didn’t steal it, and I didn’t buy it, 
and Steve owes me a dollar, don’t you, Steve? 
See! This is how I got it.’ And from his pocket 
he produced an angleworm, which he laid elabor- 
ately on the table, his auditors backing off in 
some alarm from its unexpected appearance. 
‘See through it, Steve?’ giggled Nicky, waltz- 
ing around the table and ecstatically poking 
his worm. 


JUST, LIKE STEVE 323 


“You sure got me, kid,’ confessed Steve. ‘I seen 
trained dogs and wise birds in my time, but an 
angleworm with a college education is a new one. 
How’s it done?’ 

The method, as volubly explained by Nicky, 
turned out to be simple but effective. He had 
ordered a quart of sauerkraut, and, while Tony’s 
back was turned, had inserted the worm he had 
just dug. This, he had exhibited in righteous in- 
dignation to the owner of the delicatessen, and 
with a grand air had walked out, threatening to 
tell the owner of the rival store of the undesirable 
character of his wares. To purchase his silence, 
the distracted shopkeeper had pressed upon him 
a quart of fresh sauerkraut as a gift, and pro- 
mised to empty out his kraut tubs and purchase 
further supplies from a more reliable dealer. 

Steve listened delightedly to this recital, 
flipped the dollar over to Nicky, and remarked to 
Lusky in an undertone, ‘What did I tell ya? 
Ain’t he got the bean on him?’ Then to Nicky: 
‘Wantta learn a game? A game the big guys play?’ 
—and at Nicky’s delighted assent, he drew up 
his chair, took a pack of cards and some chips out 
of his pocket, and began to explain the principles 
of draw poker to his young disciple. ‘You know 
what a flush is, don’t you, Nicky? And three of a 


324 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


kind? That beats two pair’ — and he illustrated 
by laying out his cards on the table. 

‘Sure,’ said Nicky. ‘I seen ’em play that game 
down to Grogan’s, lots 0’ times.’ He hung over 
the table breathing excitedly while Steve gave 
further instructions, deftly shuffled the cards, and 
dealt them for a trial game. - 

Mamie looked over Steve’s shoulder, Granny 
picked her chickens industriously, and Lusky 
and Mrs. Boushka gazed heavily on, disapproving, 
but nevertheless profoundly impressed by Steve’s 
dollar so carelessly bestowed. 

‘I want three,’ shouted Nicky. Then, ‘I raise 
ya, Steve, I raise ya five,’ 

‘Listen to the kid bluffing,’ chuckled Steve to 
Lusky. ‘All right. I call ya, kid. Show your 
hand.’ 

Nicky shouted with laughter, exhibited a full 
house, and swept in the chips. ‘See what I had, 
Steve? See what I had, Granny? He thought I 
didn’t have nothing, and I trimmed him.’ 

Steve laughed and turned to Lusky: ‘Did ya 
ever see the beat of that kid?’ he asked as he re- 
dealt. 

Nicky began to giggle as he peered at his cards. 
‘Raise ya ten, Steve.’ 

‘Is it beginner’s luck, or are ya bluffing me?’ 


JUST LIKE STEVE 325 


asked Steve, looking keenly at him, as he laid 
down twenty chips. 

Nicky called, drew two cards, and with a 
flushed face shoved all his chips into the center of 
the table. 

‘All mght, I guess ya caught ’em,’ admitted 
Steve, hesitating slightly. ‘Take the pot, but 
let’s see what ya got, kid.’ 

Nicky began to shriek, and dance around the 
room. *Didn’t have nothin’ but one pair. Bluffed 
Steve and got the pot! Bluffed Steve and got the 
pot!’ — and he rushed to old Granny and hugged 
her. The others looked on doubtfully at these 
mysterious proceedings, and Steve murmured: 
“He’s got a poker face already. Even bluffed me. 
Better have that kid in your business, Lusky. 
He’d skin the hide off an elephant.’ 

Suddenly Mamie ran to the door. ‘It sounds 
like little Sadie Sokol cryin’ out there,’ she ex- 
claimed. ‘What’s the matter with Sadie?’ — and 
she ushered in a very forlorn little girl, who was 
crying dismally. 

‘I lost my black chicken,’ Sadie sobbed. ‘My 
little pet chicken. He was so cute, and I guess 
the dogs got him. I liked my chicken better than 
anything in the world,’ she wailed on Mamice’s 
shoulder. 


326 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


At this tragedy the room suddenly became very 
still. Old Granny stopped her busy occupation 
and tried to spread her apron over the disorder 
on the floor. Nicky’s wild joy over his successful 
game was instantly checked, and he stood frozen 
with alarm and regret. Mamie managed to com- 
bine sympathy with discretion, by throwing her 
arms around Sadie and making her turn her back 
to the woodbox and its incriminating evidence. 

‘T’ll get you another chicken,’ promised Nicky 
eagerly, when he could collect himself. 

‘My father says it’s no use, the dogs get ’em.’ 

‘Then I’ll get you a dog,’ cried Nicky, even 
more enthusiastic; but Sadie’s head shook in 
despair. 

‘T liked this little chicken so much. He followed 
me around, and everything,’ she sobbed. 

Mamie was almost in tears herself by this time, 
and, with her arms around the sorrowing Sadie, 
went out with her, while Nicky watched them 
ruefully and then cast his eyes around the room 
in meditation. In the corner stood two fire ex- 
tinguishers. Toward these he marched, picked 
them up, and started out the door with them. 

‘Where ya going, kid?’ asked Steve. 

‘I’m goin’ to get Sadie a chicken,’ answered 
Nicky stoutly. 


JUST LIKE STEVE 327 


“Don’t you shoot chickens with that truck you 
got and get us into trouble,’ warned his mother. 

‘I ain’t goin’ to shoot no chickens,’ he assured 
her, and trudged out of the door. 

Steve turned to the group apologetically: ‘I 
would have paid for the kid’s chicken, but I want 
to see what Nicky will do. He’s made for big 
business, that kid is.’ 

‘He’s made to be a crook,’ declared Lusky, 
suddenly rousing. | 

‘That’s just what I say,’ agreed Steve. ‘He’s 
made for business on a large scale. It pays little 
fellas like you to be honest. The big boys don’t 
have to be. He’ll be busting Wall Street some 
day, that kid will.’ 

‘It’s not such good business to pay for a chicken 
when you don’t have to,’ returned Lusky grump- 
ily. 

‘Oh, well,’ laughed Steve, ‘every guy has his 
weakness. Even the biggest of them don’t like 
to see the girls cry. Sometimes it takes more 
than a chicken to stop them, but the idea’s the 
same.’ 

But Mr. Lusky had been thinking his slow 
thoughts while all this was going on, and had 
decided that it would not do to have a business 
partner who was quite so sharp. ‘He might pick 


328 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


the cash drawer. I’d rather have Mamie,’ he 
announced suddenly. 

‘Sure you would,’ agreed Mrs. Boushka in a 
relieved tone. ‘Mamie’d work swell for you, Mr. 
Lusky.’ 

‘Ain’t I told you to keep your hands off 
Mamie?’ snarled Steve, fiercely, half rising from 
his chair. ‘Are you going to let that cute little 
girl sell tobacco to a bunch of bums in that old 
fool’s store?’ he asked, turning to her mother. 

‘T figure to marry Mamie,’ went on Mr. Lusky 
imperturbably. 

Mrs. Boushka rose with an alacrity she had 
not hitherto shown. ‘Mamie’ll be pleased to 
marry you, Mr. Lusky,’ she said delightedly. 
‘She’ll make a good little wife.’ 

Steve confronted them. ‘I’ll see you all in hell 
first!’ he shouted, showing his teeth. 

‘He wants her himself,’ went on the star 
roomer, gazing at vacancy. 

‘You're a crook, get out of my house!’ screamed 
Mrs. Boushka. 

‘Tf I’m a crook, I know it, and that’s more than 
you can say,’ shouted Steve. ‘Marrying off that 
cute kid to old Jumbo! If it comes to buying her, 
I can pay more than he can. How much do you 
want for her?’ — and he took his wad of bills 


JUST LIKE STEVE - 329 


from his pocket and began counting them off to 
Mrs. Boushka, who gazed at the money speech- 
less, while Mr. Lusky looked on in growing un- 
easiness. 

At this point the door opened abruptly, and a 
policeman entered shoving Nicky in front of him. 
Nicky was trying to look very independent and 
manly, but his furtive glances at Steve implored 
him for some cue as to how he was to meet this 
new emergency. 

‘Here’s your kid trying to make out he’s the 
agent for fire extinguishers stolen out of Casey’s 
barber shop,’ said the officer. ‘There’s been a 
good many complaints, and it looks like Nicky 
was the thief. Can’t you raise your kids? What’d 
you steal ’em for, Nicky?’ he asked, shaking the 
boy slightly by the shoulder. 

‘I had to have the money,’ answered Nicky 
after a pause, hanging down his head. 

‘What for?’ 

‘To buy a present,’ was the still more em- 
barrassed reply. 3 

‘A kid sweetheart, hey? What she stick you 
for? A diamond tyrara?’ laughed the policeman. 

‘She wanted a hen,’ answered Nicky, too dis- 
tressed for the moment to do anything but tell the 
truth. 


330 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


‘A hen!’ shouted the policeman, and threw 
back his head for a laugh, when his eye happened 
to fall on poor scared Granny vainly trying to 
hide the chicken feathers behind the woodbox. He 
walked over, kicked them with his foot, and then 
rummaging among the kindlings he produced 
the ill-fated black chicken partly plucked, and 
held it up accusingly. ‘It looks like one of old 
Sokol’s hens. He said his kid was crying like hell 
because she lost it. So you pinched the wrong 
hen, hey? and then tried to sell stolen goods to 
pay her back? Is that it?’ he asked Nicky. 

‘It’s that fella who teaches him wrong!’ 
screamed Mrs. Boushka, pointing at Steve. ‘I 
bet he stole them things himself, and got Nicky 
to sell’em. That’s what I bet’— and she shook 
her fist in Steve’s face. 

Steve nodded. ‘She’s right. That’s what I 
did,’ he said quictly to the policeman. 

A blank silence fell on the room. The entire 
Boushka family gazed at Steve with dropping 
jaws. Lusky’s face relaxed in a contented smile, 
but Mamie and Nicky’s astonishment melted into 
adoration as they edged toward their hero, now 
doubly dear. 

The policeman stared at Steve incredulously. 
‘You and I ain’t strangers, Steve,’ he said, ‘an’ 


JUST LIKE STEVE 331 


you’ve been up to plenty of meanness. But a 
coupla tin cans out of a barber shop ain’t your 
style of graft. It’s hard to believe it of you. Did 
he steal ’em, Nicky?’ 

Nicky gazed at Steve without answering. He 
did not know what his idol wanted him to say. 

‘Sure I stole ’em, and got you to peddle ’em, 
and don’t you forget it,’ interposed Steve. ‘I'll 
tell that to the judge. He’ll believe it fast enough,’ 
he added, with some bitterness, to the policeman. 

As the two men moved toward the door, 
Nicky, who could bear the strain no longer, ran 
after them. ‘He didn’t steal ’em!’ he cried. ‘I 
stole ’em myself. You know I did. You stay here 
and take care of Mamie.’ He threw himself on 
Steve’s arm dragging him back, and Mamie flung 
her arms around his neck sobbing convulsively. 

But Mrs. Boushka snatched a child with each 
hand and dragged them back, shaking them 
roughly. 

Steve nodded to the officer. ‘I stole the fire- 
killers. Don’t you worry. But this kid’s right to 
be scared about his sister. Don’t let ’em marry 
her off to that old stiff while I’m gone, will ya? 
It’s only the workhouse, Mamie,’ he called to the 
girl. ‘I’ll come back and marry ya, I promise ya I 
will.’ 


332 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 


‘Swell husband you’d make,’ remarked the 
policeman with a laugh. 

‘As good as that fat alligator they’re wishing 
onto her,’ rejoined Steve, flushing hotly. ‘If he 
lays a damned finger on her, I’ll blow up his 
tobacco joint and him in it. Except for Granny, 
I’m the only friend these kids ’a’ got, and they 
know it.’ 

‘Then they’re sure outta luck,’ remarked the 
policeman dryly; adding with more kindness, ‘I 
don’t see through your game, but I’ll look after 
the kids. I promise you that.’ 

‘I can look after my own kids,’ was Mrs. 
Boushka’s furious parting shot. ‘He’s a thief, 
and I won’t let my kids be like him.’ 

“No, I don’t advise any kids to be like me,’ was 
Steve’s bitter response as the door closed. 

Mamie had in the meantime torn herself from 
her mother, and she and Nicky clung to each 
other in the middle of the room. 

‘Don’t cry, Mamie,’ comforted Nicky. ‘He’ll 
come back.’ 

‘He’d better not!’ shouted their mother. 

‘He’s a dirty bum,’ commented Lusky as he 
tilted back comfortably in his chair. 

‘He is not. He’s the swellest fella I know,’ 
sobbed Mamie in a hot defense. 


JUST LIKE STEVE 333 


‘He’s a crook,’ pursued Lusky, cocking his 
derby over one eye, but otherwise unmoved. 

‘Well, if he’s a crook, then I wantta be a 
crook,’ announced Nicky. ‘He’s the best guy in 
the world. When I grow up, I’m goin’ to be — 
just — like — Steve!’ 


THE END 


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